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Presented with the Compliments 

of 

BEACH HAVEN REALTY 
COMPANY 

BEACH HAVEN, N. J. PHILADELPHIA 

Geo. W. Taggart, Gen. Sales Agt. 801 Crozer Bldg., 1420 Chestnut St. 

OFFICERS 

Pm,-^.«/-Warren Webster, President Warren Webster Co., Camden 

Vtce-President-l^n... B. Caruth, 16th and Spring Garden Streets, Philadelphia 

Secretary-non. M. L. Berry, ex-Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, 

Ocean County, N. J. 

Treasurer and General Mana,er-Yion . W. Mercer Baird, ex-Mayor of Beach Haven 

Proprietor of Baldwin Hotel 

DIRECTORS 

Geo. H. Holman, President Ocean County Trust Co., Toms River, N. J. 

Dr. C. H. Conover, Tuckerton, N. J. 

Chas. W. Beck, President Beck Engraving Co., Philadelphia 



Send for a copy of our handsome new booklet, 
"On to Beach Haven." It's free and contains 
some valuable information. Write at once. 




/' 



THE LURE of LONG BEACH 

By GEORGE B. SOMERVILLE 



PUBLISHED, 1914, BY 

THE LONG BEACH BOARD OF TRADE 



Ti 



41 



That the people of these United States may have op- 
portunity to decide intelligently upon the important question 
of a summer seashore rest and playground for themselves 
the following brief resume of Long Beach Island is given 
to the world. 



COPYRIGHT, 1»14. BY 
THB LONG BEACH 
BOARD OF TRADE 



l"; 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I — The Lure of the Sea 5 

II — The Lenni Lenape 10 

III — Jersey Discovered 15 

IV— Berkeley and Carteret .... 20 

V — Early Life on the Beaches . . 25 

VI— Old Bond's 30 

VII — Early Days of Beach Haven . . 44 

VI I I—Long Beach Resorts 49 

IX — Long Beach Recreations ... 58 

X — Flotsam and Jetsam 64 

XI — Retrospection and Conclusion . 70 




little ecc harbor inllt 
'brioantine 
ATLANTIC CITY 



yiONGPOflT 

''ocean city 



LONG BEACH 
RESORTS 

Barnegat City 
High Point 
Harvey Cedars 
Surf City 
Beach Arlington 
Ship Bottom 
Brant Beach 
Peahala 

Beach Haven Terrace 
Spray Beach 

North Beach Haven 

Beach Haven 

Hoi gate 

Sea Haven 




33 



The Lure of Long Beach 



I 

THE LURE OF THE SEA 

THE lure of the sea has been calling irresistibly 
to the sons and daughters of men since the pre- 
Adam days. Its mysteriousness, its vastness, its 
vagueness, its incomprehensibleness, its sublimity and its 
cruelty alike have been sung, and almost worshiped, for 
ages. 

No man may place his finger upon the particular 
attribute of old ocean that most appeals to mankind — its 
lure is a combination of all its wonders. A sunrise on 
the sea has kept the artists of the world distracted since 
paint and palettes were invented ; and a flaming, blood- 
red, golden-gloried sunset is beyond the depiction of 
finite mind ; indeed, almost beyond finite comprehension, 
so majestic, so sublime is its superterrestrial grandeur. 

From time immemorial legend and history tell of the 
people journeying toward the sea. Its call has been po- 
tent in all ages and in every latitude, and men have risked 
their lives upon its fluid, cold and pitiless bosom since 
anthropic animals first learned the rudiments of naviga- 
tion by paddling a log with arms and hands. 

" Break, break, break, 
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me." 

The human mind is all but blank in the presence of 
old ocean's majesty, and there is one predominating 



The Lure of Long Beach 



thought that at some time or other has flitted through 
the mind of every loiterer by the sea : " I am here today; 
this wonderful waste of water was here yesterday, will be 
here tomorrow ; rolled for asons before I came, and will 
roll on and on when I am gone. Why ?" 

In addition to bearing upon its tireless bosom the rich 
argosies of the ancient and modern world, the sea has 
contributed much toward the sustenance of the race 
since man has lived upon this earth; and it is still con- 
tributing, still inviting men to come and take freely. 

But gathering one's food from the caverns of the 
deep is not an avocation suitable for weaklings. It is a 
stern occupation, and requires the mental and physical 
prowess of the adventurer. In seafaring life among 
men, as among the denizens of the deep themselves, the 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest is the supreme law. 
The weakling riding upon the crests of the waves and 
the weakling in the mysterious depths of the waters are 
alike the victims of the unrelenting life. 

And the contemplation of the terrible submarine 
tragedies that have been enacted beneath its mute and 
sun-kissed surface— indeed, that may even be in progress 
as one gazes across the placid waters— adds to the appal- 
ling grandeur of it all. And the dreamer turns from the bat- 
tles of the deep to the strivings among the children of men. 
Fortunately, however, the morbid is not the domi- 
nant note in the music of the sea. In its serious moods 
Its exhibitions of irresistible power are awe-inspiring; 
but the summer visitor rarely sees the ocean in mighty 
travail with the storm king. 



The Lure 0/ Long Beach 



It is in summer as though the majestic ocean were 
tamed for the season. For a distance of five to ten miles 
seaward the stroller may view a passive, quiet, sunlit field 
of seemingly endless blue water. Here and there a sail 
may be descried far out upon the rim of the visible world 
of waters. It passes slowly, so slowly to the watcher on 
shore that he is almost persuaded it rests at anchor, on- 
ward along that vague penumbral line where sky and 
waters seem to meet, and that we call the horizon. 

And the ship may be bound for China ; indeed, most 
people like to imagine passing ships as bound for China ; 
there is something so subtly oriental and poetic in the 
thought — and China is as good a country as any for 
dream ships outward bound. 

And the slowly passing sail goes on and on, across 
the blue, world-wide stage, while the inland rester sits 
quietly on the beach or in the cooling shade of some 
columned seashore hotel porch and drinks in the quiet 
and rest and peace fulness and inspiration of the wonder- 
ful scene. And these serene moments by the edge of 
the sea — coupled, of course, with the seasons of gayety 
and care-free life — are the peak-tops of the land dweller's 
enjoyment during his annual visit to the shore. And an 
annual jaunt down where, 

" Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean 
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forests," 

is more and more becoming a national institution among 
the American people as the years roll by. American 
business life is conducted at so high a pressure that com- 



^ The Lure of Long Beach 

plete relaxation—which means absolute rest amid sooth- 
mg environments; in short, getting back to nature 
undisturbed— for at least two weeks in the year is 
imperative if the work-a-day man or woman hopes to 
maintam himself or herself at a worth-while standard of 
efficiency. 

There are, of course, prominent voices that decry 
vacations; but these voices are the servants of minds so 
obsessed with work and dollar-making that to them a 
period of rest is so much time wasted. We are told that 
insanity is but a matter of degree, and these minds are so 
doUar-msane that the poetry of the restless sea has no 
appeal. Life to such as these is one continual dollar- 
hunt, and their hours on earth are regulated by a golden 
time-clock. 

But to the normal man and woman to whom life is 
something more than an expedition in discovery of bac- 
teria-covered bills, the calmness of a rest by the heaving sea 
is as the crooning of a mother to her frightened babe. 

It oftentimes takes years for the simplest fact— the 
ideal seashore resort suited to one's individual needs, for 
instance— to get through the skulls of men and women. 
Like the pursuit of a suitable hair tonic for one's own 
particular scalp, the inland dweller is prone to choose 
successively, and to flit annually from one shore spot to 
another. But it may be accepted as an indisputable fact 
that the resort offering the greatest opportunity for real 
seaside rest, with the minimum of annoyance, is the best 
spot for the man or woman really desirous of giving 
assistance to imposed-upon nature. 



2 he Lure of Long Beach 



Nor does it follow that the seashore resort using the 
greatest newspaper space to herald its merits to the 
world is the most desirable for the rest-seeking man, 
woman, or family. The choicest scenic spots in the 
United States are not pictured in the railroad guides or 
blazoned in the newspapers or books of travel. But 
they are known to perhaps one, perhaps a coterie of 
appreciative artists who also have the adventure bacilli in 
their veins. 

The old order changeth and the American 
people are rapidly coming to realize that the 
purpose of a summer vacation by the cooling, 
health-restoring sea is simply to rehabilitate their 
minds and bodies for efficient performance of 
their share of the world's work throughout the 
remainder of the year. 

That the people of these United States may 
have opportunity to decide intelligently upon 
the important question of a summer seashore 
rest and playground for themselves the follow- 
ing brief resume of Long Beach Island is given 
to the world. 



10 



The Lure of Long Beach 



II 
THE LENNI LENAPE 

NEXT to the true sea lover's delight in the 
niajestic beauties of the boundless ocean comes 
his sympathy and fellow-feeling for those who 
have preceded him in the enjoyment of its marvels. The 
loiterer on the white beach sands turns backward along 
his mental pathway as he gazes meditatively out across 
the heaving billows, and almost unconsciously transports 
himself into the days of the long ago. He mingles with 
those shadowy hosts who have sighed and dreamed be- 
side this same flood of waters, and, like Hamlet, he 
speculates upon the utility and the wherefore of it all. 
If the beach stroller happens to be of a scientific turn 
of mind he will remind himself of his studies of ancient 
man, what he was, how he lived, and where. He will 
recall to mind his wanderings through the mazes of 
archaeology and will hold quiet discourse with himself. 
Perhaps it is these quiet communings one has with one's 
self by the mighty and peace-inspiring sea that draws 
mankind to its moaning shore. 

" How long have men wandered along this coast ?" 
is his sentimental and unscientific method of questioning 
himself. He is aware that science has advanced some 
claim that man was in America during a paleolithic age, 
and that his implements, principally of argillaceous sub- 
stances, have been found in the Trenton (New Jersey) 
gravels ; that the remains of vanished animals similar to 



The Lure of Long Beach 11 

those in Hke gravels in Europe have been unearthed, 
and, lastly, the remains of prehistoric man himself have 
been found. 

But this rumination is altogether too misty and irksome 
for a summer day by the waves, and the rester trips 
mentally and airily down the ages until he finds himself 
making wampum from clam shells in company with the 
Lenni Lenape Indians who once roamed the beaches. 

"Ah!" he sighs; **this is something like. Here is 
Romance. Here are the heroic braves ; the dark-eyed 
Indian maidens ! " 

But the Red Man's history in New Jersey, especially 
after the arrival of the white man and his fire-water, is 
anything but heroic. 

The Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, were of the great 
Algonkin family of Indians whose many tribal branches 
were scattered along the Atlantic seaboard from the 
bleak reaches of Labrador to the Everglades of Florida. 

The name Lenni Lenape signified, according to the 
different translations, "Our Men," the "Original" or 
" Pure Indian." The Delaware (Lenni Lenape) nation 
occupied the territory now comprising the State of New 
Jersey, and lived along the river valleys because of the 
abundance of easily acquired and nature-provided food. 

But before the seashore dreamer invests the early 
Lenni Lenape with the implied qualities of the valiant 
Hiawatha and the winsome Minnehaha he will recall 
that these original Jersey men were dark-eyed, black- 
haired, with the all too well-known scalp-lock, and that 
their bodies were usually smeared with animal oils and 



12 The Lure of Long Beach 

stained in fantastic and symbolical designs with mineral 
or vegetable dyes. 

William Penn, writing of the Indian houses, speaks 
of their being fashioned like English barns, and Pastorius 
sets forth that young trees were bent to a common center 
and a shelter formed by the branches being fastened 
together and covered with bark. All the early writers 
agree that the interior of these Indian houses were in- 
tolerably dirty, and that scarcely any attention was paid 
to the most elementary laws of sanitation. 

But the Lenni Lenape was generous, and until he left 
New Jersey he invariably motioned his guest to the mat 
in the center of his wigwam — the seat of honor. The 
Indians of New Jersey, if they did nothing else worth 
while, have earned a place on the menu cards of America 
in that they invented that succulent dish of boiled corn 
and beans now known as *' succotash." 

Polygamy was permitted, but the Lenni Lenape was 
a wiser man than Solomon in this, for, "owing to the 
trouble and annoyance of a plurality of women, polygamy 
was but little practiced." 

The Indian boys had a Spartan time of it until their 
sixteenth or eighteenth year, when, if found to be pro- 
ficient in all manner of tribal physical exercises, fishing 
and hunting included, they were "initiated" into the 
tribe. But there were no suffragettes in those days, and 
the women bore the brunt of daily life in the wilds. 
Theirs it was to toil and plant and reap and carry the 
burdens. 

But such were the customs, and rebellion against the 




[v^'f^ '.r,ftt#^ 




The Sayonara, Owned by Dr. K. H. Williams, 
the First Herreshoff Boat in Little E^^ Harbor Bay 

Shell Mounds of the Indians, Tuckerton Creek 




^ 



V 



'J 



33 






The Lure of Long Beach 13 

conventions was unknown. Indeed, it would have been 
considered a violent breach of etiquette for a gentleman 
Indian to beg a lady Indian's pardon and relieve her of 
her stone hoe. 

And the Indian maidens of those days, when they 
attained to the age of sixteen and began casting about for a 
beau, were not driven to the expedients of raiment and 
deportment sometimes affected by their modern white 
sisters on the summer boardwalks of today. Nor were 
matrimonial bureaus necessary. When the Indian maiden 
decided to marry she advertised the fact, simply but effec- 
tively, by donning a crown of red or blue bay leaves. 

Then the throng of young braves stood aside and 
looked over the living, walking advertisement columns, 
selected the '* Want Ad" that suited, and arranged with 
the families and the Medicine Man. 

The wedding ceremony was a simple and unostenta- 
tious event, with no church splurge, no taxicabs, and no 
huge caterer's bill coming in afterward to provoke pa 
Indian's profanity. When the relatives had all gathered 
around and the howling had ceased for a moment, the 
young brave handed a bone to his lady love, and she in 
turn handed him an ear of corn. This exchange signi- 
fied that the gentlemen would provide the meat and the 
lady the bread necessary to maintain the newly estab- 
lished family. It was beautifully, artistically simple, with 
no clergyman to fee. 

New Jersey was called Scheyecbi in the Lenni 
Lenape tongue ; Philadelphia was known as Coaquanock, 
and Trenton was Chickohacki. 



The Lure of Long Beach 

The original Lenni Lenape was described by the 
early writers as being almost lovable in his hospitable 
simplicity, but when a half century had given the white 
man's liquors and the intermixture of bloods a chance 
to show what they could do it developed that the red 
man was not what he once had been ; he was not pos- 
sessed of the white man's mental power to resist temp- 
tation and overindulgence. As an act of charity he was 
placed beyond beckoning temptation, upon a reservation 
—the first in the United States. This tract of land con- 
sisted of three thousand acres near Edgepeleck, or 
Brotherton, now known as Indian Mills. The Lenni 
Lenape remained on this reservation until 1802, when 
they joined their fortunes with the Mohegans and 
removed to the State of New York. They removed 
again at a later date to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and ulti- 
mately to Indian Territory. 

The last act of the Lenni Lenape drama — or tragedy 
—occurred when the New Jersey Legislature appropri- 
ated the sum of two thousand dollars in 1832 to extin- 
guish all the right, title and interest which the Lenni 
Lenape held or might hold against the colony or State. 

Vale, Aborigine! 

On the shores of Gitche-Gumee, 
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
Stood Nokomis, the old woman, 
Pointing with her finger westward, 
O'er the water pointing westward, 
To the purple clouds of sunset." 



The Lure of Long Beach 15 

III 
JERSEY DISCOVERED 

CHRISTOPHER COL UM BUS discovered 
America on October 12, 1492, but it was not 
until a century had passed that New Jersey 
entered upon its New World history. 

Henry Hudson, sailing up-coast from the Delaware 
Bay on or about the first of September, A.D. 1609, was 
the first Englishman to make note of the seashore that 
has since become famous the world over. And it was 
only because of a change of plan in Hudson's mind while 
in mid-ocean that New Jersey was sighted then. The 
navigator had set out upon his voyage of discovery for the 
purpose of finding a northeast passage to India, but 
bethought himself otherwise while at sea and determined 
to seek a northwest passage at 40° N. latitude. He failed 
to find this and spent a week cruising in the Delaware 
Bay and River, then proceeded up the coast now known 
as New Jersey and landed from the ** Half Moon " upon 
Sandy Hook, 

From early sketches and from the navigator's own 
diary it appears that the "Half Moon" kept well within 
sight of land during the voyage from the Delaware 
Capes to Sandy Hook, and if the bathers of the Jersey 
seashore resorts had been spending their 1609 September 
vacations on the sands of Long Beach they would have 
been accorded a passing review of the ship of original 
discovery. But about the best the modern bather can 



}^ ^ The Lure of Long Beach 

do is to gaze upon the p/ace where the "Half Moon" 
passed some thj ee hundred and five years ago. 

The next adventurer to view the Jersey Coast was 
Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey, and the captain's name 
is well spread out over South Jersey to this day, par- 
ticularly in Cape May County, Cape May Court House, 
Cape May City, and Mays Landing on the Great Egg 
Harbor River. The names of two South Jersey county 
seats have fallen to the honor of this Dutch sailor— Cape 
May Court House, being the county seat of Cape May 
County, and Mays Landing, being the county seat of 
Atlantic County. 

It was some time in June, A.D. 1614, that Captain 
Mey sailed up the Jersey coast and explored Great Egg 
Harbor Bay and River, just below Atlantic City, and 
Little Egg Harbor Bay and River, just above that resort. 
Captain Mey sent some of his crew ashore in the ship's 
longboat, and they landed on the marshes and began 
prowling about much as seashore visitors do today. But 
they were unable to walk fast or far without stepping on 
the nests and eggs of all manner of shore birds, and the 
air above them was filled to blackness with thousands 
upon thousands of frightened, screaming waterfowl. 
And it was because of this novel and interesting incident 
that Captain Mey named the adjacent county "Eyren 
Haven," which, translated from the Dutch, means 
" Harbor of Eggs." Hence the prevalence in the vicinity 
of Long Beach of names embracing the words "Egg 
Harbor," including Little Egg Harbor (now Tuckerton), 
Little Egg Harbor Inlet (the best and deepest ocean 




Spanish Coins, 1682-1795 
Found in the sand near Beach Haven, from collection of Chas. W. Beck 




-] 



111! 



Dining Room Door, Hond'.s Loiiu Beach House 



<i- 



The Lure of Long Beach ^^ 

inlet from Sandy Hook to the Delaware Breakwater), 
Egg Harbor City, etc. 

In the year 1632 Sir Edmund Plowden, of Ireland, 
together with eight associates, petitioned King Charles I 
for a grant of the land, " Manitie or Long Isle, and thirty 
miles square of the coast next adjoining, to be erected 
into a County Palatine called Syon." 

This petition did not receive the stamp of royal 
approval, but it was re-presented, the second prayer 
designating Long Island as **Isle Plowden" and the 
county palatine "New Albion," with forty leagues square 
of the adjoining continent. 

Sir Edmund and his associates agreed to "settle five 
hundred inhabitants for the planting and civilizin g thereof ." 
Upon the presentation of this petition a patent was 
granted and Sir Edmund Plowden was appointed Governor 
over the area of New Albion, which embraced the land 
now comprising the States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware and Maryland, as well as Long Island. The 
grant included Maryland, notwithstanding the fact that 
this territory had been granted to Lord Baltimore some 
years earlier. 

After a succession of misadventures in and pertaining 
to New Albion there appeared, in December, 1648, a 
"Description" of the new territory, written by Beau- 
champ Plantagenet, a relative of the far-famed Richard 
Cceur de Lion, King of England. And in this "De- 
scription" may be found, in seventeenth century verbiage, 
the beginnings of the literary art of exploiting seashore 
real estate. 



18 



The Lure of Long Beach 



New Albion was likened unto Lombardy, with "a rich, 
fat soil, plain and having 34 rivers on the main land, 17 great 
Isles, and partaketh of the healthiest aire and most excel- 
lent commodities of Europe." Forest woods of every kind 
were abundant, with fowl, fish, salt, corn, good mines of 
minerals, dyer's ware, **5 sorts of deer, buffes and huge 
elks to plow and work, all bringing 3 young at once." In 
the uplands were *'hogges and turkeys 500 in a flock, and 
having near the colony of Manteses 400,000 acres of plain 
mead land and meer levell to be flowed and fludded by 
that river for corn, rice, rapes, flax and hemp." 

"I saw there," writes Master Evelin, in his letter to 
"Madam" Plowden,"an infinite quantity of bustards, swans, 
geese and fowl." Turkeys there were, one which weighed 
forty-six pounds. Whales and grampus swam the sea, 
while on land were "cedars, cypresse, sassafras, pine apples 
and the dainty parsemenas." 

AH through New Albion, according to these early 
writers, were scattered the seats of Kings, that near Tren- 
ton being called Kildorpy, "neer 200 miles up from the 
ocean, it hath clear fields to plant and sow and neer it is 
sweet large meads of clover or honeysuckle ... a ship 
of 140 tuns may come up to these fals which is the best 
seat for health, and a trading house to be built on the 
rocks and ten leagues higher up are lead mines in stony 
hills." 

But the high- water mark of early New Jersey grandil- 
oquence is the description of Mount Plowden, "the seat 
of the Raritan King . . . twenty miles from Sandhay 
sea and ninety from the ocean, next to Amara hill, the 



The Lure of Long Beach 19 

retired paradise of the children of the Ethiopian Emper- 
our, a wonder, for it is a rock, two miles compasse, 150 
foot high, a wall like precipice, a strait entrance easily 
made invincible, where he keeps two hundred for his 
guard, and under it is a flat valley all ready to plant and sow." 

Wake ! Wake ! my Jersey Muse, and sing 
The glories of thine Albion King ! 



20 



The Lure of Long Beach 



IV 

BERKELEY AND CARTERET 

SIR EDMUND PLOWDEN died in 1659, but 
even before his death the Plowden title to Wew 
Albion became hazy. In 1659 Philip Calvert, of 
Maryland, set forth the claim that Plowden had never 
obtained title from the King, but had received his patent 
from the Viceroy of Ireland, and that consequently it was 
valueless. In 1784 one Charles Varlo, an Englishman, 
came with his family to America to assert his title to the 
one-third part of the charter which he had purchased 
from the Plowden heirs. While in New Albion he trav- 
eled from place to place distributing a pamphlet setting 
forth the abstract of his title, and gave out also, in 1785, 
"A Caution to the Good People of New Albion alias, 
corruptly called, at present. The Jerseys," warning them 
against contracting for or buying any land in the province. 
Varlo failed to obtain redress by suit in Chancery and re- 
turned to England. With his departure died the claims 
of the Plowden interests to New Albion. 

On June 23 and 24, A. D. 1664, James, Duke of 
York, signed deeds conveying the land now known as 
New Jersey to two faithful House of Stuart men. Lord 
John Berkeley, Baron of Stratton, and Sir George Car- 
teret, of Saltrum, '' to be called by the name or names of 
New C^sarea or New Jersey." The name thus desig- 
nated was in honor of the defense in 1649 by Sir George 
Carteret of his native Isle of Jersey when attacked by 
the army and navy of the parliamentarians. 



The Lure of Long Beach 21 

In order to secure the colonization of their new and 
vast property, Berkeley and Carteret, on February 10, 
1664-65, signed and published ^'Concessions and Agree- 
ments of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New 
Cssarea or New Jersey to and with all and every the 
Adventurers and all such as shall settle or plant there.'| 
Under the terms of "the Magna Charta of New Jersey," 
the government of the province became vested in a gov- 
ernor, a council of not less than six or more than twelve 
men to be by him chosen, and an assembly of twelve 
members chosen annually by the "freemen." 

As a further inducement to those in late rebellion 
against the Crown to cast their lot in the New World, 
one hundred and fifty acres of land was promised to such 
as embarked with the first governor, provided the immi- 
grant had furnished himself with "a good musket, . . . 
bandiliers, and match convenient." To slaves over four- 
teen years of age a plot of seventy-five acres was prom- 
ised, and a similar acreage to every Christian servant 
when he had completed the service of his "time." 

According to a recognized authority, John White- 
head, the title to the soil of New Jersey was derived 
through four great sources— first, through the Indian; 
then the Dutch; through Governor Nicolls, who received 
the "articles of surrender" from the Dutch in 1664 ; and 
lastly through the Lords Proprietors, Berkeley and Car- 
teret. But behind all was the grant from King Charles, 
who claimed paramount title by virtue of discovery. 

On March 18, 1673-74, John Fenwick, formerly a 
major in Cromwell's army, and later a Quaker, pur- 



22 The Lure of Long Beach 

chased from Lord Berkeley his half interest in New 
Jersey. Associated with Fenwick was Edward Byllynge, 
and their purpose was somewhat Utopian, in that they 
planned in the New World an asylum where perfect re- 
Ugious and political freedom would be established — the 
first such spot on earth. But the great bugaboo of titles 
that had **run with the land" from the Indian down 
arose between Fenwick and Byllynge, and William 
Penn, who had but recently joined the Society of 
Friends, was called in to arbitrate. Penn awarded Fen- 
wick one-tenth of the land and a sum of money, and to 
Byllynge nine-tenths. Shortly afterward Byllynge 
became involved financially and assigned his interest in 
trust to William Penn, Gawen Lawry, and Nicholas 
Lucas, February 10, 1674. Fenwick's tenth eventually 
passed also into their control. 

After the transfer of title by Berkeley the Duke of 
York released to Sir George Carteret his individual 
moiety of the province, which included all of New Jer- 
sey north of a line drawn from Barnegat Creek, " about 
the middle between Sandy Point and Cape May " (the 
seacoast terminus of said line being at a point on Long 
Beach near Bond's), to another creek ''next adjoyneing 
to and below a certaine Creek in Delaware River called 
Rankokus Kill." But this attempt at adjustment merely 
served to comphcate matters, and was promptly aban- 
doned. 

The actual separation of the province into East and 
West Jersey occurred on the 1st day of July, 1676— just 
one hundred years before the Declaration of Indepen- 



The Lure of Long Beach 23 

dence— when a " Quintipartite Deed " was executed by 
Sir George Carteret, William Penn, et al., partitioning 
the territory. This deed's famous Hne, long known as 
the "Province Line," extended from Little Egg Harbor 
at a point two miles below Beach Haven, crossing Long 
Beach to 41° 40' north latitude to the Delaware River. 
Carteret was awarded East Jersey, and West Jersey was 
awarded to Penn and his associates. 

The reader will never know the strength of the temp- 
tation resisted at this point— the temptation to write of 
New Jersey as "the battle-ground of the Revolution,"— 
for no State suffered more in that hardship-filled struggle 
for freedom except, perhaps. South Carolina. But the 
present chapter is a backward glance merely, not a history. 
But a word will be permitted. When the clouds of 
gloom had settled over the country at the close of that 
terrible winter spent by General Washington and his 
depleted and impoverished army of four thousand fam- 
ished men at Valley Forge, the sun of hope beamed 
once more after the skillful maneuvers at the Battle of 
Trenton on December 26, 1776, and followed a week 
later by the victory at Princeton. 

Of two British expeditions sent out in 1778, one was 
directed against Little Egg Harbor. This expedition, 
after burning considerable shipping at Chestnut Neck, 
on the mainland near Long Beach, landed on Osborne's 
Island during the silence of night and compelled an 
innocent citizen, under threat of instant death, to guide 
the soldiers to Count Pulaski's encampment, near Tuck- 
erton. The advancing British encountered an outpost 



ff The Lure of Long Beach 

of thirty Americans, and so quiet had been their march 
that the Continental troops were taken completely by 
surprise and butchered almost to a man, some of them 
even when crying for quarter. A monument was 
erected at Tuckerton a few years ago by the State of 
New Jersey to Count Pulaski and his heroic soldiers. 

A glimpse of the strenuousness of this early life in 
the colonies is had in the heroic, fearless conduct of the 
bravest woman in New Jersey's history— Molly Pitcher 
—before whose monument in the Old Graveyard at 
Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the writer has often stood in 
respectful awe and admiration. 

It was in a blood-drenched New Jersey ravine near 
Monmouth that Molly Pitcher won enduring glory. 

"Molly Pitcher, rightly Mary Ludwig; daughter of John 
George Ludwig, a German Palatine ; born in Pennsylvania, 
probably at Carlisle, October 13, 1744; married John 
Hays 1769, a gunner in Proctor's 1st Pennsylvania Artillery; 
she followed him to the field, and when he was shot at 
Monmouth she took his place; served nearly eight years 
in the army ; placed on list of half-pay officers ; married 
Sergeant George McCauley ; died January 22. 1823, and 
was buried with military honors." 

Much niore could be said of the valiant service rendered 
by the patriotic residents of the mainland of New Jersey 
in the vicinity of Long Beach, and of their transportation 
across the sandy roads in huge, broad-tired wains, after 
nightfall and in muffled silence to escape attracting the 
attention of British sentinels, of many articles needed in 
Philadelphia and proclaimed contraband. To be caught 
meant an unceremonious "short shrift," but the sturdy 
Jerseymen "took a chance," in the vernacular of today. 




Captain Thomas Bond 



Thompson Westcott 

Historian of Philadelphia, 

" Governor" of Long Beach 



Ye Olden Times at Bond's Long Beach House 






y ^' '/ 



/ yy/X 



,,:<i;-^- 





</ 

V 




^ 


yy 




/ 


/ 







^ 




i 


yy 
yy 




^y 


yj 




'A7,j,. 


■^y 


y /^ 




Sam Shourds 



Leaf from Bond's Cash Book 
(jideon's Band 

"Twixt you and I, I really think 
It's pretty near time we had a drink, 
If you belong to Gideon's Band, &c." 



Caleb Parker 



The thrtt lower picturei were painted by William F. Read 
in 18S9, now hanging in Mr, Read's Cottage. 



The Lure of Long Beach 25 

V 
EARLY LIFE ON THE BEACHES 

MANKIND aforetime has been accustomed to 
look upon the sea from an elevated point on 
land, and it was not until well beyond the 
middle of the nineteenth century that the low-lying 
seacoast of New Jersey began to attract the inland city 
dweller's attention. Early life on the mainland and 
beaches of New Jersey was prosaic, colorless, and 
uninteresting. Indeed, today nothing more monotonous 
than isolated life on a barren beach, wind-swept, wave- 
washed and neighborless, can well be imagined. 

But in the early days the beaches were as an unknown 
land to the inlander. They were devoid of artistic 
beauty, a seemingly hopeless waste, and were the terror 
of coastwise trading mariners. The wrecks that have 
been strewn upon New Jersey's sands since the begin- 
nings of things in the New World would fill many 
modern argosies with untold riches, and will be referred 
to later. 

The beaches marked the shore lines of the old 
counties of Monmouth, Burlington, Gloucester and 
Cape May, with the mainland extending to the sea only 
in that portion of Monmouth County lying between 
Deal and Point Pleasant. Southward the ocean was 
shut out by long, narrow strips of islands composed of 
sand, and between these and the mainland lay innumer- 
able salt meadow marshes, lagoons, channels and bays. 



26 



The Lure of Long Beach 



Each generation has its own problems, and the 
working out of these problems constitutes the history of 
a people. The problem of turning the beaches to some 
account presented itself to the pioneer, and when he saw 
them covered with coarse grasses he determined to utilize 
them as pasturage. Accordingly he built fiat-bottomed 
scows and transported his cattle across the bays from his 
mainland farm. After branding them he turned them 
loose to graze and roam at will. Frequently at the 
"round-up " *' strays" were missing from the flock, and 
these strays in time became the progenitors of the **wild 
cattle " that have been hunted and shot on Long Beach 
even within the memory of men still living. 

The apparently mysterious has always been a lure for 
mankind's speculation, and the presence of these " wild 
cattle " upon the beaches has given rise to many weird 
and fanciful tales. Indeed, it is almost an offense against 
tradition to explain away so simple a legend that has 
been the source of much learned disputation, not only 
among shore Jerseymen who have ''shot 'em and seen 
'em," but among visitors of culture eager to find an un- 
common topic on which to while away a seashore holiday. 

Upon Long Beach in the early days was a luxuriant 
growth of red cedar. Oak, gum, holly and other woods 
grew on the beaches and were utilized in shipbuilding, 
the manufacture of chests, casks and furniture. 

But especially were these beaches the terrestrial 
"happy hunting ground" of the white hunter, accom- 
panied by his half-breed or negro guide. Wild fowl 
were so abundant that had Baron von Munchhausen laid 



The Lure of Long Beach 27 

the scene of his rather marvelous duck shooting adven- 
ture on Long Beach the tale might have " got by." In- 
deed, there were so many shore birds that even the 
apparent exaggerations of the early writers did not do 
the matter justice. 

In the waters were fish of all sorts "in prodigious 
shoals," and oysters, clams and Crustacea were abundant 
at all seasons. No matter how poor a shore dweller 
might be, he was unafraid of the lone wolf, starvation, 
for nature provided prodigally, and it was but for him to 
reach forth his hand and take. 

Whaling was one of the principal industries along the 
Jersey coast in the early days, and this industry, now 
abandoned, was extremely profitable. The discovery of 
whales in New Jersey waters brought many New Eng- 
land and Long Island whalers to the colony. And in- 
deed, even today when a sick whale becomes stranded 
on the Jersey coast the first impulse of the finder is to 
lash it firmly to the edge of the United States, and his 
second to wire some New England whaleman. 

Many of the early whalers settled permanently near 
Tuckerton, and their small but stanch boats patrolled 
the Jersey coast from Sandy Hook to Cape May on the 
lookout for the valuable leviathans of the deep. An 
evidence of the importance of the industry may be cited 
in the instructions sent from London July 20, 1683, to 
Governor Gawen Lawry commanding him to "take 
particular inspection into the conveniency of fishing 
. . . especially as to the whale fishing, which we (the 
Proprietaries) desire may be encouraged lest the fisher- 



28 



The Lure of Long Beach 



men be drawn elsewhere for want of due encourage- 
ment." And in West Jersey an Act was passed in 1693, 
providing that all persons "who shall kill or bring to 
shore any whale or whales . . . shall pay one full and 
entire tenth of all the oyle and bone made out of the said 
whale or whales unto the present Governor of this 
Province for the time being." 

Subsequently, with the introduction of steel and cellu- 
loid in lieu of whalebone, and the substitution of mineral 
oils, and for the reason, too, that the whales were being 
exterminated, this industry along the New Jersey coast 
was abandoned. 

The tiller of the soil early became the dominant figure 
both socially and politically in the Colonial days, and 
everyone, male and female, had some knowledge of the 
science of agriculture. 

But comforts as we know them today were unknown. 
Perhaps in all New Jersey there was not a bathtub, save 
those provided by nature in the form of rivers and the 
ocean. Stoves were unknown, and the boiling, frying 
and stewing were done over and in front of the cavern- 
like fireplace, with the smoke and odors filling the rafter- 
grimed kitchens. Screens were unknown, and the now 
detested fly and the festive mosquito as well revelled in 
the persecution of mankind. Tallow dips and wax candles 
were the luxuries of the rich, while pine knots aglow 
served the poor as means of night-time illumination. 

The food was of the plainest— salted meats, fish and 
pork, with fresh deer and bear. Beans, potatoes, carrots, 
turnips and cabbages were the staples, together with rye 



The Lure of Long Beach 29 

bread and milk. A few luxurious families preserved small 
quantities of peaches and apples in stone jugs, but other- 
wise fruits were to be had only " in season." 

Work upon the farms was performed largely by three 
classes of laborers — slaves, both Indian and negro; ap- 
prentices, and redemptioners. These last were men and 
women who had agreed to sell their labor for a term of 
years in payment of their transportation from the Old 
World to the New. 



30 



The Lure of Long Beach 



VI 
OLD BOND'S 

FOLLOWING the Revolutionary "days that tried 
men's souls " an era of comparative peace settled 
over the new United States, and nature set about 
her long-deferred experiment of molding from every 
specimen of immigrant from Europe a distinctive nation. 
And this new nation— this modern world-experiment— 
has proved itself successful, and has developed aggressive 
and forceful characteristics in the dwellers of the United 
States that for want of a better name we term American. 
Thus we have American shrewdness, American humor,' 
American slang, American unconventionality, American 
democracy. And in no one place is American democ- 
racy more potent than at the seashore during the height 
of the summer season. 

John Bull makes almost a religious rite of it when 
he a-bathing goes, and his solemn ponderosity as he 
emerges from his bathing machine and enters the water 
at any of the Old World watering places brings the 
wrinkles of a smile to the face of a real American. But 
on the New Jersey coast snobbery is almost unknown 
among lovers of the sea, and especially on the Long 
Beach section has the true spirit of cosmopolitanism 
maintained its sway from the earliest days. 

Seashore life in midsummer began in a small way— 
as all great things do— on Tucker's Beach or Short 
Beach, which is now a part of Long Beach, although 



The Lure of Long Beach 31 

formerly separated from that long-drawn-out island by 
the old inlet, which filled up entirely in 1874, so that 
men and women walked across dryshod from Long to 
Short Beach. When it is recalled that even as late as 
1848 this old inlet was two miles wide, and that it was 
navigable for the smaller coasting vessels even up to the 
year 1866, the changes wrought in the configuration of 
the New Jersey coast by old ocean will be faintly realized. 

Tradition has it that in the year 1800 an inlet broke 
through a wooded, swampy section of Short Beach, or 
Tucker's Beach, during a wild and stormy night, and 
the portion thus separated from Short Beach has since 
been known as Little Beach. The inlet this created is 
now known as the New Inlet, and is the best and deepest 
exit to and ingress from the Atlantic Ocean between Sandy 
Hook and the Delaware Capes, being now two miles 
wide and with a depth of fourteen feet of water at low tide. 

The earliest migration of seashore visitors from the 
Delaware Valley was to Long Beach, and it was on 
Tucker's Beach, then a part of this island, that the sea- 
shore life of the State began. 

Little Egg Harbor (Tuckerton) was settled by mem- 
bers of the Society of Friends in 1699. In 1704 a Friends' 
Meeting was established, and beach parties on the shore, 
participated in by the Quakers, their visiting kindred and 
friends, began to become popular. At this period the 
section of the island known as Long Beach was devoted 
to the raising of horses, and the beach parties seemed to 
prefer Tucker's Beach for their outings. 

Reuben Tucker lived on this beach, and, after 1765, 
gradually began to entertain summer guests. 



^2 The Lure of Long Beach 

About 1815 Joseph Horner, who for some years had 
kept the Tucker House on Short Beach, removed to 
Long Beach and built a house at the spot which later 
became known as Bond's. This house was afterward 
kept by Thomas Ivins, who was in turn succeeded by 
Lloyd Jones, Jones conducted the house for a number 
of years until 1844 or later. James W. Kelley, of Tuck- 
erton, now 77 years of age, visited Jones' house on Long 
Beach some seventy years ago, and saw scattered about 
there great quantities of tea and silks salvaged from 
wrecks thrown up on the coast. 

Lloyd Jones built a new house, which he subsequently 
sold to Captain Thomas Bond. The old house was 
still standing during the boyhood days of Theophilus 
T. Price, of Tuckerton, and was used as a shelter for 
Bond's flock of sheep. Someone had painted the letters 
Y. M. C. A. on the end of the old building. 

Thomas Bond was a bachelor and was originally at- 
tracted to Long Beach by the excellence of the gunning 
and fishing. After purchasing the boarding house from 
Lloyd Jones, Bond brought a manager from New York. 
Later Lewis Stewart, of Tuckerton, who also kept the 
hostelry at Tuckerton, became the manager of Bond's 
house. Stewart died in 1862, after which date Mr. Bond 
procured the services of a housekeeper. 

The old Bond's boarding house faced the bay, at a 
distance of three hundred yards. The beach at this 
point was a mile wide, and bathers were conveyed across 
from bay to ocean in a stage wagon driven by " Billy " 
Carr, and after his death by " Billy " Crane. The young 




Charles T. Parry 
Dr. Samuel Ashhurst Archelaus R. Pharo 




-r^ '::' * i I Hit* 1 1 , , , 




The Engleside 
The Parry House 



Robert B. Kn^le 



The Lure of Long Beach 33 

people were compelled to walk because there was not 
room in the stage for all of Bond's guests. The pathway 
to the ocean led over two sloughs crossed by rude 
bridges, but these bridges were used by the pedestrians 
only — the teams waded through. 

Immediately back of the center of the boarding house 
Captain Bond kept a great eagle, caged, and this eagle 
screamed protest and defiance at the curious guests. Hard 
by the eagle's cage was the billiard room and bowling 
alley. Captain Bond himself was exceedingly fond of 
euchre, and, according to Captain John Marshall, who 
now lives and has lived for fifty years in Beach Haven, 
and who knew and served under Captain Bond in the 
Life-Saving Service for ten years, euchre was the constant 
amusement of venerable Thomas Bond when fishing 
or shooting could not be indulged. " Euch" was Captain 
Bond's abbreviation for euchre, and, in Mr. Marshall's 
words, it was " ' Euch, euch, euch' all the time, and many 
thousands of games we have played together." 

The life of the guests was free and easy at Bond's 
house in the old days, as became such an out-of-the-way 
resort. Fishing, bathing and shooting filled the daylight 
hours, but the evenings laid something of a tax upon the 
ingenuity of the guests, and occasionally a donkey's head 
mask, attached to a shawl-covered quadruped, appeared 
in the halls and brayed, greatly to the consternation of the 
feminine guests, who by this sign were enabled to guess 
that "the boys" were becoming hilarious. 

Mr. George G. Pierie, of Philadelphia, first visited 
Bond's Long Beach House in August of the year 1858, 



34 The Lure of Long Beach 

leaving Camden on the morning train of the Camden and 
Atlantic Railroad, and arriving at the Little Egg Harbor 
Inlet at eleven o'clock A. M. The sloop "Lewis Senat," 
commanded by Captain "Billie" Gaskill, of Tuckerton, 
was then boarded and the voyage across the bay began. 
Bond's house was reached at three in the afternoon. 

Good, plain food was served, with milk and vegetables 
raised on the island. Board at Bond's cost seven dollars 
per week in those early days — one dollar a day. Tallow 
candles furnished light at night, and no man dared appear 
in a ** biled shirt." For his first offense he was tried sum- 
marily by an improvised court — and was invariably con- 
victed. Jersey justice was speedy indeed in those days, 
and the sentence usually meted out was "settin' 'em up 
to the house." Flannel shirts were the correct thing for 
the male guests at Bond's, and milady was wont to be more 
comfortable socially when she appeared in nothing more 
expensive or elaborate than a calico or gingham wrapper. 

The guests constituted a '* happy family," with the 
"kickers" and "growlers" soon finding it convenient to 
seek other quarters. An informal "election" was held and 
Thompson Westcott, of Philadelphia, was elected " Gov- 
ernor of the Island." His mandates were scrupulously 
obeyed by the guests as long as Bond's house remained 
open. 

From the earliest days of Colonial history this section 
of the Jersey seashore has been the paradise of the Nim- 
rods and Ike Waltons of the eastern United States. 

It was the wonderful fishing and gunning that lured 
the genial Bond away from his fortune-making watch- 



The Lure of Long Beach 35 

case business in New York City to the nature-blessed 
shores of Long Beach about the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, and it was this same lure, coupled with 
the "healthful aire and good climate of the Longe 
Beaches," that brought his varied assortment of guests. 
And well-known names appear in the array of those 
who in bygone times partook of Bond's hospitality. 
Indeed, at this point might be set down a list of the 
pioneers of that section of Long Beach now known as 
Beach Haven, and that list would be but the nucleus of 
those ancient frequenters of Old Bond's. 

Numbered among those honored pioneers are : 

Archelaus R. Pharo Philip Dunn 

Charles T. Parry Samuel Ashhurst 
Dr. Edward H. Williams Walter W. Pharo 

John H. Converse Thomas Sherborne 

William F. Read William Burnham 

John B. Parsons George G. Pierie 

Charles Gibbons Dr. Albert H. Smith 

And many other bearers of notable names were 
guests at Bond's house in the early seashore days. 
Registered there in the '40's were Bisphams, of Philadel- 
phia, Alex. Harper and Lady, Lewis Blaylock (hatter) 
and Jos. Budd (farmer), all of whom came to hunt and 
fish, and even earlier names no less familiar are found. 

If the compass of this work permitted, many interest- 
ing incidents could be cited concerning members of the 
"honor roll" above set forth; but for the present the 
mere mention of their names must suffice ; at least until 



36 The Lure of Long Beach 

a proper history of this romance-filled and historically 
rich section of the New Jersey coast is undertaken. 

In 1871, after the completion of the Tuckerton Rail- 
road, many well-known Philadelphians came to enjoy the 
place, including the aforenamed pioneers. Among them 
may be mentioned John Dovey, William H. Hoskins, 
J. Altemus, Jos. B. Ridge, H. A. Potter and Thomas P. 
Parry. 

The old Bond House is gone and its relics scattered. 
The dining room door was found in an old barn near the 
site of the house and photographed for this book. On 
it are carved, in school-boy manner but improved style, 
many well-known names. 

Mr. George G. Pierie, of Philadelphia, who has been 
a faithful and constant summer visitor at Bond's and 
Beach Haven since 1858 — a Long Beach Patriarch indeed 
— while in a reminiscent mood one day early in May, 
1914, said: "The fishing in the old days at Bond's was 
great. Sheepshead were abundant, and on many days I 
have caught fifteen and twenty in a morning. I con- 
sider the fishing today at Beach Haven the surest and 
best on the Jersey coast." 

This is further confirmed by the following : 

Extracts from The American Angler^s Book, by Thad. Norris 
Philadelphia, 1864 

Of all places within easy distance of our city, commend me to Long 
Beach, where the accommodations are good (barring the butter), mosqui- 
toes few (if the wind is not off land), and the landlord one of the most 
obliging and appreciative men in the world, as to the requirements of the 
angler or shooter. And, moreover, where Sammy Shourds is always on 




42-Pound Drum Fish 



Weak Fish 



72 Pounds of Sheepshead 





t ■' 





^ 



r^ 



The Lure of Long Beach 37 

hand. Sammy can find soft crabs when no other man can ; besides, he 
knows all the fishing grounds, and when the tides suit at each ; when to 
go on the flats for weakfish, when in the Cove for barb, when in the 
channel for sheepshead, when to the flat, sedgy islands for rockfish, and 
when to squid for bluefish. Here, according to the adjudication of the 
aforesaid Sammy, a friend and myself caught with our rods in three morn- 
ings (fishing four hours at each time) over five hundred pounds of weak- 
fish and barb, and touched up the rockfish in the afternoon at the islands. 
Page 278. 

When on a visit to Long Beach in August, 1855, a brother angler and 
myself had great sport with barb in the cove just below the hotel. They 
had not been taken in numbers for some years, and had become compara- 
tively a rare fish until we met them. In a few hours on the ebb we took 
upward of three hundredweight with two rods and left off from mere 
satiety, for the certainty of hooking them as fast as our bait found the 
bottom ceased to be sport. Page 288. 

** I have heard stories of *wild cattle* on the Beach," 
Mr. Pierie continued, *' but that was before 1858 ; and 
also weird stories of * Pirates ' living on the Beach and 
enticing vessels ashore and wrecking them. There was 
a curious old man by the name of Caleb Parker living 
at Barnegat Light House in those days, and every sum- 
mer he came to Bond's to fish for sheepshead. We 
called him the * Barnegat Pirate,' and he certainly looked 
the part. Rumor had it that he was the only and last 
descendant of the * Pirates ' that lived on the island in 
1770." 

An episode of these times, known as The Massacre 
of Long Beach, follows : 

The Long Beach Massacre took place about a mile 
south of where Barnegat lighthouse now stands. October 
25, 1782, a cutter from Ostend, bound for St. Thomas, 



38 The Lure of Long Beach 

grounded on Barnegat Shoals. She was found there by 
the American privateering galley, or whaleboat, "Alliga- 
tor," Captain Steelman, of Cape May, who started to 
wreck her cargo and land it on the beach. It is assumed 
that the residents about Barnegat and Waretown joined 
in this wrecking crew, as Reuben Soper, living at Soper's 
Landing, between the two villages mentioned, according 
to tradition, was murdered a mile below Barnegat Inlet 
on the beach by the notorious Refugee, John Bacon, in 
October, 1782. 

The wrecking crew had got a lot of tea and other 
valuable cargo ashore and had camped out for the night 
on the beach. While they were all asleep, after their 
strenuous day's work in the surf. Captain John Bacon, 
the Refugee leader, landed on the beach, surrounded 
their camp and fired on them. Steelman was killed, and 
a Tory account printed soon after claims that Bacon killed 
or wounded all but four or five of the Americans. Bacon 
was killed in a fight on April 3d, the next year, 1783, at 
a small tavern kept by William Rose, between Weste- 
cunck (West Creek) and Clamtown (Tuckerton) by Cap- 
tain John Stewart, of Arneytown, Burlington County, 
Joel Cook, an unnamed man, John Brown, Thomas 
Smith and John Jones, who had come from near Mount 
Holly to the shore with the express purpose of capturing 
Bacon if possible. 

Two ancient pencil sketches hung in the hall at the 
old Bond House, both made by Thompson Westcott, 
"Governor of Long Beach Island" and editor of the 
Sunday Dispatch. One of the sketches illustrated the 



The Lure of Long Beach 39 

old method of reaching the Beach before the Atlantic 
City Railroad was built. At that time a stage was used 
from Camden to Tuckerton, and then a sailboat con- 
veyed the passengers to Long Beach. As there was no 
dock, the state of the tide frequently made it necessary 
to use a garvie in landing, and the male passengers were 
compelled to wade ashore, carrying the women on their 
backs. The drawing represented this episode. 

The other drawing was called ** Preparing for the 
Season," and showed two mosquitoes, one turning a 
grindstone, on which the other was sharpening its bill. 

At this period there were no large boats used at the 
Beach generally, and few larger than the present-day 
sneak-boxes. Mr. Louis D. Senat, who was an ardent 
gentleman sailor, designed a model for a new type of 
catboat, named it the "Clam Shell," and had it built by 
John Cranmer, on Liberty's Thoroughfare. When the 
boat was ready the guests at Bond's were invited to go 
there and paint it, and a water-color sketch was made of 
the incident, and it hung for years in the hall. Liberty's 
Thoroughfare was named in honor of Liberty Price, 
who lived on it, and Margery's Bar, opposite the thor- 
fare, was named in honor of his wife Margery, so simple 
was the nomenclature of the times. 

During the Revolutionary days vast quantities of sea 
water were evaporated on Long Beach to obtain salt, 
this being long before the discovery of salt mines in the 
interior. 

There were no regularly organized life-saving crews 
on Long Beach in the old Bond House days, but the 



40 The Lure of Long Beach 

Government had erected boathouses along the beach, in 
the vicinities of hotels and private residences. These 
boathouses were equipped with lifeboats and life-saving 
paraphernalia, but their use in time of need depended 
upon volunteer life-savers living near by. 

The key of one of these boathouses located near 
Bond's house was kept hanging up in the bar-room. 
When a ship was discovered in distress someone ran to 
the bar-room, took the key from the wall, aroused the 
guests and attendants into activity, and the whole com- 
pany trooped to the Government boathouse. Here the 
amateur life-savers procured the equipment and pro- 
ceeded toward the beach, everybody telling everybody 
else just how to set about rescuing passengers and crew. 

In the early fifties a vessel named "The Georgia," 
with about four hundred immigrants on board, came 
ashore opposite Bond's, and Captain Bond afterward told 
Mr. William F. Read that the immigrants were so fam- 
ished he was compelled to stand at the dining room door 
armed with an axe to keep them out until the meal was 
ready. This feeding of the ship's crew and passengers 
was an unrewarded bit of generosity on Captain Bond's 
part, for he was unable to recover the expense from the 
vessel's owners, and the libel of the wreck produced but 
little. 

In describing a wreck near Bond's in 1860, William 
F. Read, in an interview in May, 1914, said: '*In the 
latter part of June of that year a hurricane came up one 
afternoon and drove everybody into the hotel. You 
could fairly see the wind itself, and while the guests 



The Lure of Long Beach 41 

were huddled together a report came from the upper 
porches on the south end that a schooner was aground 
about three miles off the beach. 

"A rescue corps was immediately formed, the key to 
the lifeboat house was secured, and the party ran as fast 
as possible to the boathouse. The excitement was so 
great that without waiting for the horses the volunteer 
corps dragged the boat by hand, launched it, and stood 
in the tumbling surf until the crew could be shipped. 

"The boat reached the wreck, which was on its 
beam ends with the sea breaking over it, and the crew 
were in the crosstrees. All were saved, but with only 
the clothes they had on their backs, and the guests hunted 
out for them what other articles were required when 
they reached the hotel. There was also a water-color 
sketch hanging in Bond's that showed this incident, but 
it has disappeared. 

"About this time one of the visitors, who had been 
in the South for his health, brought to the Beach the 
song of 'Gideon's Band,' which became quite popular 
there. The words and air were given to Mr. Dodworth, 
a visitor, who was leader of the orchestra of the Arch 
Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and he brought it out there 
in the following autumn and popularized it generally. 

" I remember that for two years at least a prominent 
factor in Bond's menu was prunes in every shape and 
form. A ship loaded with them came ashore and it took 
several years to consume the cargo." 

Old Captain Bond was one of the pioneer Life-Saving 
Service captains on Long Beach, and even before the 



42 The Lure of Long Beach 

organization of regular life-saving crews by the Govern- 
ment, Captain Bond was in the federal service, receiving 
a stipend of $200 per year for looking after the Govern- 
ment boathouse and Hfe-saving equipment hard by his 
hotel. 

A verbatim report of a wreck on the Long Beach 
coast, written by Captain Bond himself, is herewith given : 

"March 11, 1876. 

"The Ship Ontario came on shore at 1.30 A. M., 
March 8, 1876. Weather was foggy and dark. Took 
boat and mortar to scene of vessel with team. We were 
obliged to wait until daylight, as we could not make out 
her exact position. Answered her night signals. 

"The sea was very high and tide running across the 
beach. Shot one ball to ship and parted two wires ; just 
as we fired mortar three boats left the ship with all her 
crew. 

"They could not land and went up the beach before 
the wind. We fired a second ball and got a fine aboard, 
but crew had all left. The crew landed two miles above, 
upsetting one of their boats, but all were saved. We 
boarded ship at 6 A. M., 10 A. M., and at noon. 

"Ship Ontario, Captain F. Patterson, hails from 
New York. Age twenty-one years. Number of persons 
in crew twenty-seven. No passengers. Bound from 
London to New York with general cargo. Estimated 
value of cargo, $200,000. Estimated value of ship, 
$140,000. 

" Stranded vessel lies about two miles above Little Egg 
Harbor Inlet. Mistaking of lights is supposed cause of 



The Lure of Long Beach 43 

wreck. Vessel has nine feet of water in hold. Amount 
of insurance on vessel, $50,000. 

" The morning was foggy and dark and we discovered 
ship about 3 A. M. Taking with us mortar, lines and 
all the apparatus needed, went to the scene of wreck 
assisted by team of horses. We located the wreck by 
lantern which had been left on beach by patrol. Nothing 
could be seen of vessel except her lights and distress 
signals. We were obliged to wait for the sea to run 
down, so that we could launch a boat. We had to build 
a platform to coil our line on so as to keep it out of 
the water. We saw, soon as daylight made, three boats 
leaving the ship. 

"The mortar was fired and aline put aboard, but the 
ship was deserted ; they said all left in the three boats ; 
so we launched a boat and started to her, through a very 
rough sea. We boarded her, but found her deserted. 
The ship's boats finding they could not land drifted up 
the beach and landed at a point opposite Beach Haven. 
One of the boats upset while landing, but all were 
rescued. 

(Signed) Thomas Bond 

Keeper Bond's L. S. S." 



44 The Lure of Long Beach 

VII 
EARLY DAYS OF BEACH HAVEN 

BEACH HAVEN, which is but two miles up the 
beach from old Bond's, came into being because 
of its being a spot particularly suited to those suf- 
fering from that annoying late summer malady known 
as " hay fever." 

Mr. Archelaus R. Pharo, of Tuckerton, had become 
a regular summer guest at Bond's on Long Beach because 
of the suffering endured by his wife in her mainland home 
during each successive " hay fever" season. From long 
acquaintance Mr. Pharo knew Little Egg Harbor Bay 
thoroughly, and his choicest rock-fishing ground was at 
the points of the sedges adjoining the channel where now 
stands the Beach Haven Dock. He knew the advantages 
which the smaller channel behind the islands offered as 
a harbor for boats, and when, largely by his personal sac- 
rifices and efforts, the Tuckerton Railroad was opened in 
November, 1871, his earnest desire, in which he was 
faithfully seconded by his brother-in-law, Theophilus T. 
Price, was to bring the railroad to the bay shore and to 
have established a steamboat line to Long Beach. 

In the minutes of the Tuckerton Railroad's meeting 
held June 5, 1872, appears the following: "The Commit- 
tee appointed — on the subject of extension to the Bay — 
reported that Messrs. Pharo and Stuyvesant having agreed 
to lend the Company $5000 toward building the exten- 
sion, they have felt warranted in commencing the work, 
which was begun on Monday, 3d inst." 





Beach Haven Wharf 

Hotel De Crab 

Captain Tih Fox, Proprietor 

One of the Original Life-Saving Stations 




M 






The Lure of Long Beach 45 

The steamboat "Barclay," which had previously run 
up Rancocas Creek, was bought, but later a new steam- 
boat named the "Pohatcong" was built. When the 
Tuckerton Railroad purchased locomotives in 1871 they 
bought them from Burnham, Parry, Williams & Com- 
pany (Baldwin Locomotive Works), and immediately 
thereafter Charles T. Parry's name appeared as a member 
of the Tuckerton Railroad Board of Directors. Mr. 
Parry subsequently became greatly interested in Beach 
Haven. 

The naming of Beach Haven was brought about in 
the following manner. When Mr. Archelaus R. Pharo 
had purchased the beach lots and had organized the land 
company, a suitable name was sought for the new town- 
to-be. Various persons racked their brains without hit- 
ting upon just the suitable name until Mrs. Samuel Ash- 
hurst — a daughter of Mr. Pharo — thought of the two 
words. Beach Haven. The combination was at once 
recognized as appropriate and the name bestowed. The 
comment of Dr. A. A. Willitts, a strong partisan of this 
section of Long Beach, was that an **e" should be inserted 
in Haven, making the new name Beach Heaven. 

The actual beginning of Beach Haven as a resort 
came about in 1874. In the spring of that year, follow- 
ing the construction of a dock and road whereon mate- 
rial could be landed and hauled, the Parry House was 
built and two cottages were erected by A. R. Pharo, one 
cottage for Dr. Albert Smith, of Philadelphia, and the 
other for his own family. 

The first patrons of the new resort happened to be 



46 The Lure of Long Beach 

five young men from Haverford College, who, just after 
the Commencement in June, 1874, occupied the Pharo 
cottage for a week while the carpenters were still putting 
the finishing touches to the two cottages, and while the 
Parry House was being rushed toward completion ready 
for its public opening. 

Lloyd Jones, upon removing from Bond's, built the 
Bay View House at Beach Haven, and this hotel is now 
known as the Beach Haven House. The Long Beach 
Land and Improvement Company, composed largely of 
pioneers heretofore named, erected the Parry House, 
naming it in honor of Mr. Charles T. Parry, who was 
active in the interests of the company. After the 
destruction of the Parry House by fire the present Hotel 
Baldwin was constructed, and this hotel was named in 
honor of Matthias W. Baldwin, the builder of the first 
effective steam locomotive in Pennsylvania, and the 
founder of the great Baldwin Locomotive Works. 

Robert B. Engle operated the Parry House for the 
Land Company during the first year, and became the 
lessee during the second. In 1875, together with his 
cousin, Samuel T. Engle, he purchased a square of land 
near by, and on the first of January, 1876, began the 
erection of the Engleside Hotel. In 1884 Robert B. 
Engle bought out Samuel T. Engle's interest and operated 
the Hotel alone until 1890, when his son, Robert F. 
Engle, began taking an active part in the management. 
Robert B. Engle died in May, 1901, and the following 
year the Hotel property was incorporated under the 



The Lure of Long Beach 47 

title of "The Engleside Company," of which Robert F. 
Engle is manager. 

Both the New Hotel Baldwin and the Engleside are 
numbered among the high-class hotels- — in newspaper 
parlance, " Beach-front Palaces " — along the New Jersey- 
coast. 

And, indeed, at any of the resorts scattered from end 
to end of Long Beach the inland toiler will find absolute 
change of scene, the comforts of home, and an atmos- 
phere imbued with coolness and restfulness. 

True seashore rest is the antithesis of the fatigue and 
weariness produced by man's or woman's participation in 
the toil and stress of his or her own particular phase of 
the world's work. And the truly restful bit of seashore 
is that where the flippant, tantalizing and fictitious so- 
called "amusements" are absent. Ancient merry-go- 
rounds with wheezy organs are out of place beside the 
majestic solitudes of old ocean; screeching vaudeville 
^'queens" should be voiceless within sound of the breakers' 
roar, and claptrap "shows" and mendicant "fakirs" are 
out of place where men and women gather for rest from 
year-round work and city "attractions." "Back to na- 
ture ! " — and nature unspoiled welcomes the sons and 
daughters of men to Long Beach. 

Hotels inferior to none on the New Jersey coast are 
scattered along this magnificent beach, and the every-day 
comforts and luxuries of life are immediately at hand; 
but it is in the wonderfully lavish array of nature-pro- 
vided seashore diversions that Long Beach excels. 

As previously set forth early in this sketch, it takes 



48 The Lure of Long Beach 

a long time for a new idea to break through the cra- 
niums of human beings, and the selection of a good sum- 
mer fishing ground seems to be one of those slow- 
moving ideas that mankind finds hard to assimilate. 
This may be due in large part to the false advertisements 
spread broadcast about marvelous fishing to be found 
here and there — in the Canadian Lakes, in the Maine 
woods, and other distant spots — by companies having 
transportation to sell. Consequently the summerite, 
having tried many of these much-advertised spots, is 
skeptical about real fishing grounds nearer to Philadel- 
phia even than Atlantic City. But old Captain Bond 
knew ; George G. Pierie knows ; and many other well- 
known Philadelphians, including J. S. Ivins, who spends 
practically the entire summer of every year aboard his 
yacht in Beach Haven waters, know. If space per- 
mitted, their personal and enthusiastic testimonials 
would be printed here. 

Long Beach is indisputably New Jersey's Mecca for 
fishermen, and the lover of Spanish mackerel, the Blue- 
fish, the Butterfish, the Striped Bass, the Weakfish, or 
the Croaker, will find himself on ideal fishing grounds 
along this section of the coast. 



^ 



-,-.«';=£^4'^ 












4. 





New Hotel Baldwin 
Harvey Cedars Hotel 
Spray Beach Hotel 



T. he Engleside 
The Breakers 




^2-^J*^i 



^- ^ 



■^- I. 




23 






03 



The Lure of Long Beach 49 



VIII 
LONG BEACH RESORTS 

IN the early days, after the opening of the Camden 
and Atlantic Railroad in 1857, it was the custom of the 
Long Beach pioneers to visit their favorite seashore 
spot by way of Atlantic City. In 1857 a favorite rende- 
vouz for these "old-timers" was Bedloe's Hotel in At- 
lantic City, and a boat running from there had Captain 
William (Billie) Gaskill for skipper. A few years after- 
ward a small steamer called " The Wave " was tried, but 
was soon abandoned on account of its being unable to 
use salt water. Captain Gaskill then re-commissioned 
his sloop and maintained communication between the 
resorts for many years. 

Old-timers agree that the first spot settled on Long 
Beach was at the " Great Swamp" (now Harvey Cedars), 
which was well sheltered and wooded a hundred years 
ago. A number of families removed to this lonely sec- 
tion just after the closing of the war of 1812, but no 
record is to be found of the time at which the first house 
was erected. These families lived principally by the 
whaling industry then carried on along the New Jersey 
coast. 

James Cranmer's house at Great Swamp was the 
house of entertainment, and remained such until the 
Mansion of Health was built in 1822. The "Mansion" 
is described as having been "a large house one hundred 
and twenty feet long, and about one-tenth of a mile from 



50 The Lure of Long Beach 

the sea, well kept, and supported by a goodly number 
of inmates." As this description was written in the year 
1823, the twentieth century reader will accept the word 
"inmates " in its originally intended signification. 

A short distance from the Mansion of Health, and 
nearer the beach, stood a pole or mast with many holes. 
Through these holes round sticks had been driven, and 
the protruding ends served as a ladder. The "whale- 
watch" mounted this mast in order to descry whales 
swimming along the coast. When one was discovered 
the whaling crews were hastily summoned and great ex- 
citement and bustle prevailed in the little settlement, es- 
pecially among the wives and daughters and sweethearts 
of the crews. 

When captured the whale was towed ashore and cut up 
on the beach, while the great streams of its blood flowed 
down to the water and reddened the surf for hundreds of 
yards up and down the coast. The news traveled fast, and 
curious men and women from all the shore villages 
hastened to the strand to view the monster and to sniff 
and hold their noses as the cutting-up process proceeded. 

In 1857 the Mansion of Health was a ruin and the 
sand had drifted all around it, but Harvey Cedars was 
quite a resort in those days. Samuel Perrine, an old-time 
beacher, kept the house of entertainment at Harvey 
Cedars, and on one occasion William F. Read visited 
Perrine's house in company with a sailing party from 
Bond's. One of the visitors asked the old man whether 
he had any good brandy — he generally had, from French 
wrecks — but in this case the host answered: " Yes, Josie, 



The Lure of Long Beach 51 

some of the best thee ever drinked." " Where did you 
get it, Sammy?" '* I bought it in New York and paid 
seven shillings the gallon." "All right, Sammy, give me 
some of your apple whisky," said Josie. 

Barnegat City, which is at the extreme northern end 
of Long Beach, is seven feet higher above tide level than 
the other portions of the island, and is noted for its 
majestic bay and ocean views. A sunset on Barnegat 
alone is worth traveling many miles to see. 

Barnegat City is a borough, and the municipal limits 
extend southward about two miles from the inlet. It 
was founded in 1881 by the Barnegat City Beach Associ- 
ation. The company sold a number of lots, and two 
hotels and about twenty cottages were erected. In 
recent years, because of the increase in automobile travel 
among seashore tourists and because no direct auto- 
mobile road led to the resort, there has been little im- 
provement save in the grading of streets and general 
preparation for the new life that is being infused into all 
Long Beach resorts due to the building of the new 
bridge from the mainland to the island. 

Immediately south of Barnegat City is Harvey Cedars, 
and in the olden days Harvey Cedars was quite famous 
in its way. High Point is included within the limits of 
the borough of Harvey Cedars, and is a new and grow- 
ing settlement. Near the Harvey Cedars Hotel is 
located the big bungalow owned by Mr. W. H. Sayen, 
of Philadelphia. This bungalow is almost as well known 
today as was Brigantine Beach in its palmy days, and 
for a like reason — Pennsylvania politicians. The Sayen 



52 The Lure of Long Beach 

bungalow at Harvey Cedars is the rendevouz of many- 
notables in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics of the 
present time. 

Tradition has it that there was a whaling station at 
Harvey Cedars in the good old days, and one descendant 
of a whaler tells today of his father having helped to kill 
two whales in one day at this point. 

The first beginnings of a house of entertainment at 
Harvey Cedars was the boarding house built by Samuel 
Perrine some years before 1873. It was this Sammy 
Perrine Mr. William F. Read had in mind in connection 
with the "best brandy thee has ever drinked" story 
earlier in this sketch. 

Next down the beach from Harvey Cedars is Surf 
City. The original name of this resort, founded in 1873, 
was Long Beach City, but the similarity of the name 
with that of Long Branch caused much confusion in 
mails, freights and express, and the name was changed 
to Surf Cit}^ 

The old Mansion of Health, the pioneer of Long 
Beach hostelries, was located near the present site of 
Surf City, and was built there in the early days because 
the founders decided the location — which is the point of 
land farthest east on the island — was the most healthful. 

The resort has some fine cottages, a good hotel, an 
ocean boulevard eighty feet in width, and an artesian 
well 564 feet deep. The municipality has been incor- 
porated into a borough, and has a Town Hall, with 
school rooms and offices, and a large pavilion equipped 
with bathrooms. The water from the artesian well is 



The Lure of Long Beach 53 

devoid of all minerals prejudicial to health, and has been 
reported by the State Board of Health as being one of 
the purest waters analyzed in the State of New Jersey. 

At Barnegat Junction the railroad line from the 
mainland divides, one spur extending northward through 
Surf City, Harvey Cedars, High Point and Club House 
to Barnegat City, while the southern spur runs through 
Arlington Beach, Ship Bottom — the Siasconsett of Long 
Beach Island — Brant Beach, Beach Haven Crest, Pea- 
hala. Beach Haven Terrace, Spray Beach and North 
Beach Haven to Beach Haven, the terminus. 

The new boulevard, upon entering Long Beach, 
first strikes Arlington Beach, one of the newer settle- 
ments, lying immediately south of Barnegat City Junc- 
tion and adjoining Ship Bottom on the south. 

During a severe storm in the early days a clipper 
ship, steering her course by the Barnegat light, ran 
ashore on the sands of Long Beach, and, tossed by giant 
billows, was cast bottom upward upon the beach near a 
small hamlet. And thus it was that Ship Bottom re- 
ceived its name. Here, too, the gallant Italian sailing 
vessel "Fortuna" was driven ashore in a terrific storm 
during the winter of 1909-10, but the life-savers of the 
Ship Bottom Station rescued all on board, including even 
a pig and a cat, after a desperate struggle. Long Beach 
Island at Ship Bottom is no wider than the length of two 
or three city blocks, with the Atlantic Ocean on the east and 
magnificent Barnegat Bay a stone's throw toward the west. 

Many interesting yarns could be spun — indeed, many 
have already been spun, some of them highly colored — 



54 The Lure of Long Beach 

about Ship Bottom and the wrecks and salvages of its ro- 
mance and tragedy filled history, but space limits preclude. 

Brant Beach is the resort immediately south of Ship 
Bottom, and today is a tidy, dainty cottaged little resort 
set out upon the clean white sands beside the boundless 
sea, and within a gunshot of both the Atlantic Ocean 
and Manahawkin Bay. Hard by are great sand dunes 
that cause the admirer of the well-beloved Robert Louis 
Stevenson to turn mentally to his weird and rather sad 
tale of the Pavilion on the Links. Remarkable develop- 
ment has been made at Brant Beach within the last few 
years, and it possesses all the attributes of a real seashore 
resort. 

Next below Brant Beach is Beach Haven Crest, a 
summer resort partaking of the good things in store for 
all Long Beach towns. 

Peahala, the site of the famous clubhouse, is the next 
station down the beach. The Peahala Club of Long 
Beach was organized on April 10, 1882. The greater 
part of the property, which is now owned by the Peahala 
Club, was formerly owned by Captain Tommy Jones, of 
Long Beach. Since the Club purchased the land the 
present clubhouse has been erected. The old house, 
which was used as a haven for hunters during the time 
of Captain Jones, has been demolished. 

Beach Haven Terrace is an energetic, hustling young 
municipality on old Long Beach, and boasts of a per- 
manent winter population, two cottage hotels — the 
**Clearview" and the 'Xhalfonte" — a bakery, stores, 
waterworks and post office. 



The Lure of Long Beach 55 

Beach Haven Terrace is famous in that it was the 
home for many years of Captain " Billy " Crane, who was 
captain, during a long and useful life, of the U. S. Life- 
Saving Station located here. 

All seaside resorts have one natural and inevitable 
center of interest — the ocean front. But Beach Haven 
Terrace, and, indeed, every resort on the twenty-three 
miles of Long Beach Island, is doubly favored in that 
it has the broad expanse of Barnegat Bay behind, with 
all that this implies in fishing, safe sailing, bathing and 
every form of real seashore recreation. 

Below Beach Haven Terrace is Spray Beach, the 
summer home of John Luther Long, playright and 
author of Madame Butterfly. Spray Beach was originally 
part of Waverly Beach, and was formerly known as Cran- 
berry Hill, because here the luscious cranberry once 
grew in riotous profusion. In 1890 this tract of land 
was purchased by W. S. Ringgold and J. L. Long. The 
same year the tract was graded and three cottages were 
built, one of which was the modest beginning of Spray 
Beach Hotel. 

In 1891 the hotel was opened under. the management 
of Cornelius Dubois, and in 1893 it passed into the 
hands of William L. Ringgold. In 1894 it became the 
property of William S. Ringgold. In 1903 the hotel was 
greatly enlarged, and in 1908, after Mr. Ringgold's death, 
was sold to the present owner, Augustus L. Keil, under 
whose management the hostelry was completely reno- 
vated, while the service has been steadily improved. 

A number of attractive and substantial cottages have 



56 The Lure of Long Beach 

been erected and the thriving little community has a 
bright future. Long Beach Island is very narrow at 
this point — but a pebble's cast from the ocean boulevard 
to either ocean or bay. 

North Beach Haven is the next resort down the 
beach, and is virtually a part of Beach Haven proper. It 
partakes of all the lavish endowments nature has bestowed 
upon Long Beach Island, and is the thriving nucleus of 
a rapidly growing community. It is bounded on two 
sides by the Atlantic Ocean and Manahawkin Bay, and 
abounds in every sane facility for the real enjoyment of 
summer life by the edge of the sea. 

"The Breakers," a large hotel formerly known as 
" Dolphin Inn," is located at North Beach Haven, and 
this hostelry caters to a large and growing clientele of 
summer residents. Many modern cottages have been 
erected here in recent years, and the resort is but entering 
upon its real era of prosperity and growth. 

At the extreme southern terminus of the railroad line 
lies Beach Haven — the hay-feverless resort of the Jersey 
coast. The borough of Beach Haven is progressive 
and modern in its tendencies and alert to the advance- 
ment of the times. A huge gas plant supplies the illu- 
mination at the present time, and an electric lighting 
franchise has been granted by the municipal authorities. 

The purest of water is supplied for domestic purposes 
from an artesian well 575 feet in depth. The resort has 
graded schools, broad, graded streets, and a great number of 
magnificent seashore cottage homes. It has, in addition, the 
largest motor car garage on the seacoast of New Jersey. 






Board Walk, Beach Haven 

Surf Fishing, Spray Beach 

Sports on the Beach 






Maryland Avenue, Beach Haven Terrace, with Life-Saving Station 

Ship Bottom Life-Sa\'in(r Station 

Pennsylvania Railroad Station, Brant Beacli 



The Lure of Long Beach 57 

The fleet of pleasure yachts for hire at the Beach 
Haven Yacht Club is greater in number than the Atlantic 
City fleet, although not including boats as large as some 
of the latter resort's pleasure craft. 

Two magnificent beach-front hotels — the New Hotel 
Baldwin and the Engleside — afford the best of appoint- 
ments and cuisine, and both are built within a short 
hundred yards of the breeze-swept, tumbling ocean. 
There are, in addition, a number of desirable and well- 
conducted smaller hotels. 

Beach Haven is the modern Ike Walton's paradise 
par excellence, and its merits as the choice hook-and- 
line fishing ground of the Eastern United States are be- 
, coming better known with each succeeding season. 
I Lawn tennis is a favorite sport at Beach Haven, and 
many professional and amateur matches are played on 
the well-kept courts of both the Engleside and the 
New Hotel Baldwin every summer. 

The surf bathing here is unexcelled at any New 
Jersey seashore resort, and with the combination of 
ocean and bay, bathing and fishing, and land and aquatic 
sports. Beach Haven takes rank as the leading real sea- 
shore resort of the Atlantic seaboard. 



58 The Lure of Long Beach 

IX 
LONG BEACH RECREATIONS 

IN these prolific newspaper advertising days, when 
laws commanding advertisers to tell only the truth 
are being passed, the average reader is skeptical, very 
skeptical. He is much harder to impress than was that 
delightfully credulous old lady who vowed that anything 
appearing in print must be true. And oftentimes, to his 
own loss, he becomes so utterly distrustful that simple 
truth can find no lodgment in his mind. This reader has 
gone to the opposite extreme and is hopeless. But the 
great majority of the reading public are able to discern 
the stamp of truth, and to these, with their open and un- 
prejudiced minds, the following brief sketch of modern 
seashore attractions to be found on Long Beach Island 
is addressed. 

The bathing beach at Beach Haven and other Long 
Beach resorts diff^ers from the beaches of all other Jersey 
coast watering places, and is a happy "combination be- 
tween the steep, dangerous beaches of northern New 
Jersey and the low, shelving shores of Cape May." 
Bathing here is as safe as it is exhilarating. 

Barnegat Bay extends southward between Long 
Beach Island and the mainland and joins Manahawkin 
and Little Egg Harbor Bays, making a complete chain of 
salt water bays along the entire length of the island. This 
inland body of ever-changing tidal salt water is the pro- 
tection against the torrid mainland winds of summer, and 



The Lure of Long Beach 59 

is the direct cause of the lower temperature enjoyed on 
Long Beach the summer through. The bay here is 
some six miles wide, and with Beach Haven "six miles 
at sea," the reader can readily understand the reason for 
its coolness. No body of water along the Atlantic sea- 
board is so well known for its advantages and wonderful 
resources as Barnegat Bay. 

The name Barnegat is of Dutch origin, and from the 
Dutch word Barendegat, signifying Breakers Inlet. The 
Barnegat Inlet has always been noted for the dangerous 
breakers on its bar. 

But the bay itself is calm, and the most timid can en- 
joy sailing and boating. The yachting course here is ex- 
celled by no other in the country, and steady, safe breezes 
always blow. With the opening of the new automobile 
bridge across the bay the sport of yachting in this section 
will spread rapidly and will draw many gentleman sailors 
from all parts of the United States and Canada. The 
magnificent cruisers and pleasure yachts from New York 
and New England, and from Atlantic City and the South- 
ern States, will be able to sail down or up the safe Inland 
Waterway to the best yachting rendezvous on the coast, 
and into the very heart of the realm of fishdom at the 
same time. 

To the angler Barnegat Bay is the fisherman's para- 
dise. Thousands upon thousands of toothsome weakfish 
are caught here daily. The gamey bluefish is abundant 
in these waters and many other varieties of scrappy, fish- 
ermen-fighting fish. 

Oysters, clams, crabs and all manner of shellfish 



60 The Lure of Long Beach 

abound on the shores, and in the fall and winter wild 
ducks, geese, brant and other waterfowl gather here in 
great profusion. In short, this section of Long Beach is 
the sportsman's paradise. 

But to some anglers the thrilling delights of surf 
fishing are the peak-points of seashore happiness. Surf 
fishing was introduced to Beach Haven in 1907 by Mr. 
Charles E. Gerhard and his wife, who, by the way, takes 
almost as active a part in this most delightful of sports as 
does Mr. Gerhard himself. 

Beach Haven stood aghast one summer morning in 
1907 to see Mr. and Mrs. Gerhard, attired in bathing 
suits and armed with rods and reels, wade out into the 
surf and cast. But when, after a hard thirty-minute fight, 
a huge twenty-pound channel bass (or drum fish) was 
brought ashore by Mrs. Gerhard, Beach Haven awoke 
to the possibilities of its surf fishing. 

The surf anglers have increased in number every sum- 
mer since 1907, and in 1913 the rod and reel offered as a 
prize for the largest channel bass caught in the surf was 
won by Mr. Holt, who landed a monster weighing 
fifty-six pounds. 

Since surf fishing has been introduced in Beach Haven 
Mr. Gerhard has caught, among hundreds of other fish, 
one pompano, a warm water, Florida coast denizen, that 
apparently journeyed northward in the current of the 
Gulf Stream. The pompano constitutes the piece de 
resistance among Florida table fish. 

Visitors who have fished for the leaping tuna near 
Santa Catalina Island contend that such a journey is 



I 



The Lure of Long Beach 61 

useless merely to indulge in tuna fishing, for the leaping 
tuna abound in Beach Haven waters just off shore a mile 
or more. Tuna weighing as much as one thousand 
pounds have been caught in pound nets at this resort, 
but the heaviest ever taken by hook and line weighed 
680 pounds. The local fishermen call the leaping tuna 
"horse mackerel," and because of this confusion of 
names the tuna has not been recognized nor fished for 
in Beach Haven waters to any great extent. But he 
is attracting attention now, and the present and future 
summers will find numbers of leaping tuna fishermen in 
the waters of the resort. 

The Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club is one of the most 
flourishing of the present-day Beach Haven social and 
yachting organizations. This club started from very 
humble beginnings on July 13, 1912. Elmer Widener, 
the founder, started to build a miniature dock for his 12- 
foot sneak-box, ''TheTonik." A few boys gathered 
about and wanted to share the dock. A club was in- 
formally formed, and it grew. Now it has a roster of 
sixty-five boats, some of them costing ten thousand dol- 
lars and over, has one hundred and ten members, is still 
growing, and is about to build a fine new clubhouse. 

The Club has a Ladies' Auxiliary, and in getting up 
its racing meets does not slight the ladies. Always 
when sneak-box races are arranged for the boys a similar 
event is carded for the girls, and the sight of a breeze- 
bent sneak-box, manned by a school girl, cutting through 
the choppy waves toward the stake boat on a blowy 
afternoon is one of the inspiriting sights of Beach 
Haven aquatic activity. 



62 The Lure of Long Beach 

The Beach Haven Yacht Club is an organization 
composed of men who make a business of hiring out 
their boats and their skill, and their knowledge of the 
fishing grounds, to visitors. And here the inland visitor 
who loves the sport of old Ike Walton, but who has 
not had time to develop himself as a navigator, will find 
careful, courteous men always ready to take him for a 
sail or on a fishing expedition. 

This club is composed of some seventy sail, and was 
organized by Charles Gibbons, Jr., about 1880. The 
required qualifications for membership are competency, 
temperate habits, and pride and industry enough to keep 
yachts in seaworthy condition, the hulls neatly painted, 
sails trim, and proper facilities for the accommodation 
and comfort of tourists, fishers and pleasure seekers. The 
boats average 25 to 35 feet over all, and draw enough 
water to keep them steady in all kinds of weather. Not 
an accident has happened to any of the boats since the 
club's organization — an amazing and wonderful record. 

The launches running from Atlantic City land their 
passengers at the Beach Haven Club's dock, and these 
boats run on regular schedules during the summer 
months. Such schedules were impossible before the 
deepening of the inside channels by the New Jersey 
Waterways Commission, but much progress has been 
made since the work was started in 1907, and now boats 
of moderate draught may run at any stage of tide from 
Beach Haven southward to Cape May, or northward to 
Barnegat City and Bay Head. 

The Parker Brothers, of Tuckerton, are the pioneers 



The Lure of Long Beach 63 

of the present boat line service between Beach Haven 
and Atlantic City, and later Captain John L. Bailey, of 
Atlantic City, established a passenger line between the 
two resorts, immediately after the completion of the 
Inland Waterway. This line affords comfortable service 
between the two resorts, leaving Atlantic City in the 
morning, and leaving Beach Haven, on the return trip, 
in the afternoon. The other line completes the present- 
day waterway transportation facilities by leaving Beach 
Haven for Atlantic City in the morning, and, returning, 
leaving Atlantic City in the afternoon. 

These boats traverse Little Egg Harbor Bay, Great 
Bay, Little Bay, Grassy Bay, and the different old-time 
and new Inland Waterway channels en route, and pass 
close by the great wireless tower of the German gov- 
ernment — the tallest structure of its kind in the world — on 
the mainland near Tuckerton. This is a delightful and 
safe inland water trip, and is becoming more and more 
popular as a summer day recreation for both Atlantic 
City and Beach Haven visitors as the years go by. 



64 The Lure of Long Beach 



X 

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

STRONGER and stronger become man's indo- 
lence and desire to ride as civilization advances, 
until in the present day of the human race it is 
found necessary to have medical men and physical cul- 
turists advise us when to play and exercise. The man 
who can run a hundred yards in anything like a reason- 
able time in the year 1914 is a hero, and the wonderful 
speed machines given to men and women by nature are 
permitted to rest in a rocking chair, to loll on a piazza, 
or to recline lazily in a shaded hammock. 

Walking was man's first and surest means of locomo- 
tion, and in the early days of Long Beach the Indians of 
the interior walked with their squaws and families from 
Coaquanock (Philadelphia) and other inland points to 
the shore at Long Beach for their seashore summer ex- 
cursions ; feasted, fished and hunted the summer through ; 
and returned once more on foot in the fall. That they 
feasted upon the clams, oysters and other Crustacea of 
the seashore is evidenced by the huge deposits of clam 
and other shells found in different sections of the adja- 
cent shore today, notably near the site of the great wire- 
less tower at Tuckerton. 

Great piles of clam shells ten to twelve feet deep, 
many of the individual shells chipped and worn in the 
process of making wampum, are found today at Tuck- 
erton and other nearby spots, marking the places where 
the red man banqueted and coined his money. 




Gunnino; on the Beach 



The Lure of Long Beach 65 

The Indian's visits marked the first beginnings of sea- 
shore travel. First, he walked. Eventually he attached 
two poles to a pony, their ends dragging on the ground, 
and with this rude means of transportation his offspring 
were provided for. But Madam Indian, as well as the 
brave himself, still walked, and, hanging from the squaw's 
shoulders and arms as she marched with the single-filed 
procession through the Jersey pines and across the white 
sands to their inland winter quarters, were great strings 
of dried clams. This homeward march marked the close 
of the summer's seashore outing, and the squaw bore the 
burden of the winter edibles. 

Then came the white man to the shore, and his civ- 
ilization had advanced him to the use of wains, and then 
stage coaches ; and this form of transportation continued 
until the year 1857. 

Then for the first time in the history of the New 
Jersey coast a locomotive whistle shrieked to the ac- 
companiment of the breakers' roar, bringing terror to 
the waterfowl and other wild natives of the salt water 
marshes. Man advanced his method and his speed, and 
presently was being whirled from city to shore at the 
rate of sixty miles an hour in the soothing luxury of a 
Pullman car. 

But the seashore visitor has gone beyond even the 
luxury of a Pullman. Trains are too democratic in these 
days and too many people, merely because they are able 
to purchase transportation, are permitted to ride. For 
seclusion and for comfort the motorcar is the thing, and 
today the tourist to the sea sits restfuUy back against 



66 The Lure of Long Beach 

the deeply upholstered cushions while the chauffeur 
peers ahead through his goggles and hopes no careless 
Jerseyman will wander into the road to mar the paint 
or leave a dent in the shining body of the car. A 
whirr, a whizz, and milady has been transported from 
her luxurious city home to an equally luxurious Long 
Beach hotel. And this has been made possible by the 
completion and opening to the world of the new auto- 
mobile bridge across the Bay from Manahawkin to 
Long Beach Island. 

In the days of the long ago Spanish galleons, laden 
with the bullion, gold, silver and other wealth contributed 
by the Mexican and South American colonies, passed 
along the Jersey Coast on their way home to Spain. These 
large, old-time sailing vessels were armed, usually had 
three or four decks, with bulwarks three to four feet 
thick, and with stem and stern built up high like castles. 
They were the choice prey of Drake and other rovers 
of the Elizabethan age, and many richly laden galleons 
setting out from the New World never reached the Old. 

Some were cast away on the shoals of Barnegat, and 
many specimens of ancient coins have been washed 
ashore and found on the sands of Long Beach, particu- 
larly in the Old Inlet section, below the old Bond 
House. Indeed, for the past fifty years, down to the 
present, visitors to Long Beach have been finding these 
ancient coins on the sands. When discovered they are 
black in color, and are usually elevated upon a tiny 
mound of sand like a golf tee, the winds having blown 
the loose sand grains away, leaving only those retained 



The Lure of Long Beach 67 

in place by the pressure of the coin. As many as 500 
different pieces have been found in one day along the 
Long Beach shore, with dates ranging from 1682 to 
1795. But the coins seem to be found only after a 
storm and hard blow in some particular direction, the 
theory being that a given direction of the ocean current 
stirs up the bottom of the sea where the ancient wealth 
lies and, the wind being right, washes the coins ashore. 

Ancient piastres, or pieces of eight in the Romance 
languages, have been washed up on the sands, particularly 
at the Old Inlet and at Ship Bottom near Barnegat City 
Junction. The piastre was an old Spanish coin worth 
about four English shillings, and was divided into eight 
silver reals, hence was termed a piece of eight, the name 
invariably applied to it on the Spanish Main. 

Old-timers on Long Beach maintain stoutly that Cap- 
tain Kidd or some other and worthy "captain of indus- 
try" of those early days once visited Long Beach for the 
purpose of depositing treasure. And this legend has a 
gleam of truth thrown over it by the accounts of Captains 
S. E. Holdzkom and John Marshall, both of Beach 
Haven. 

The story runs that about twenty-five or thirty years 
ago two lone mariners came in from the sea in a sloop. 
Anchoring a mile or more from shore, they proceeded 
toward the Little Egg Harbor Inlet in their yawlboat. 
They hailed the life-saving crew at the Little Egg Har- 
bor Life-Saving Station, and were taken in and fed. 
During the conversation the strangers casually asked the 
location of ** The Two Cedars," and whether the Old 



68 The Lure of Long Beach 

Lighthouse near by was still standing. When the life- 
saving crew left the station for the night beach patrol the 
two sailors betook themselves to a point between "the 
two cedars" and the lighthouse site, and were descried 
by the lookout at dawn the next morning. When first 
seen through the glasses they were digging furiously, and 
had uncovered a huge iron-bound chest of ancient make. 
The alarm was given and the crew started for the scene. 
But the two men of the sea bundled their find and them- 
selves into the yawl and made off for the sloop. Making 
sail at once, they stood out to sea and were soon beyond 
sight and pursuit. 

Upon arriving at "the two cedars," the now observant 
beach guards discovered letters and ancient markings cut 
deep into the bark of both trees. They also found the 
iron chest, an old and rusted cutlass the wayfaring mari- 
ners had unearthed, and some ancient coins. The cut- 
lass was preserved and is now kept as a relic of bygone 
days in the office of the Superintendent of Life-Saving 
Stations at Asbury Park. 

In the early days, before the great steamships of 
modern times plied between the Old and the New 
World in comparative safety, travel was mainly in the 
clipper ships of our forefathers, and these ships, be- 
coming unmanageable in a storm, frequently came 
ashore on Barnegat Shoals — the ships' graveyard of the 
Atlantic Coast — or farther down the line of Long Beach. 
These shoals have long been recognized by the Gov- 
ernment as most dangerous to shipping, and a light- 
house 184 feet high maintains near Barnegat City a 







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The Lure of Long Beach 69 

white flash light whose beams can be seen many miles 
at sea. 

Indeed, the necessity for lighthouses, which are tall 
and substantial buildings erected on conspicuous parts 
of the coast from which a light is shown at night to 
guard mariners, and which serve as landmarks by day, 
was the real beginning of the modern settlements on 
Long Beach Island. Keepers of the lighthouses were 
obliged to reside on the island ; friends came to visit 
them from time to time ; the resources of Long Beach 
became known ; men established summer homes there, 
and finally many removed to the island to live through- 
out the year. 

There are seven Government Life-Saving Stations on 
the Long Beach Island coast at the present time, as 
follows : 

No. 17, at Barnegat Inlet. 

No. 18, at Lovelady's. 

No. 19, at Harvey Cedars. 

No. 20, at Ship Bottom. 

No. 21, at Beach Haven Terrace. 

No. 22, at Bond's. 

No. 23, at Little Egg Harbor Inlet. 

These Life-Saving Stations, manned by the pick of 
skillful and brave seafaring men, save many lives and 
much valuable shipping annually, and the records of 
their stations are filled with material rich in literary, 
romantic and dramatic value. And the yarns these 
worthies can and do spin would fill many readable and 
worth-while volumes. 



70 The Lure of Long Beach 



XI 
RETROSPECTION AND CONCLUSION 

THE first patent granted for Long Beach lands at 
Harvey Cedars was issued in 1690, and included 
the area from the Great Swamp to the Club 
House, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Main Bay- 
Channel. Here whalers and their families established 
themselves and named the settlement Harvey's WhaHng 
Quarters. Early names of the settlement were Inman, 
Rutter, Mullin, Cranmer and Stevens. 

During the summer they brought their fleet of ves- 
sels through Cranberry Inlet (Barnegat Inlet was not then 
opened through to the sea) and down the bay to Har- 
vey's Whaling Quarters. Each vessel was manned by a 
crew of eight to ten men, and the decks were covered 
with barrels. Finally the whaling business assumed such 
proportions that the crews and their families remained 
on the island throughout the year, and when this trans- 
pired the name was changed to Harvey's Hommock. 

Ninety-nine years ago Sylvanus Cox, a squatter, built 
a house at Harvey's Hommock, and the name was again 
changed, this time to Harvey Cedars. Cox later sold 
the house to Samuel Perrine, with whom the reader is 
already acquainted. Perrine built some additional rooms, 
called his place the Harvey Cedars Hotel, and conducted 
it for a number of years. He sold it eventually to Gran- 
ville Stokes, Newell Ridgway and Isaac Jennings. The 
hotel's clientele increased rapidly under Jennings' man- 



The Lure of Long Beach 71 

agement, and upon his death David M. White was in- 
stalled as manager. Several years after Jennings' death 
the hotel property was transferred to the late William J. 
Thompson, **The Duke of Gloucester," of Glouces- 
ter, N. J. 

In 1877 William and John Smith, of Brown's Mills, 
N. J., built the Atlantic House at Harvey Cedars, and 
this hostelry was managed by Howard Lukens for a 
number of years until destroyed by fire. 

Many tales of the **Barnegat Pirates" have attained 
the antiquity of legends on Long Beach, but their veri- 
fication is another matter. One of the favorite stories 
is to the effect that in the **good old days," when legiti- 
mate wrecks along Long Beach were too few, the ** pi- 
rates" would hang a lantern to a mule's neck and parade 
the animal along the beach in the darkness of midnight. 
Mariners at sea, seeing the slowly moving light, would 
assume it to be that of a ship, and would deem it safe 
to venture nearer shore. The result would be a wreck, 
and loot for the "pirates." It is a beautifully simple old 
legend, and important if true. 

Another pirate tale is that of a number of these 
beach-combers rowing out to the wreck of the sloop 
''Adelaide," owned and captained by James Lamson, of 
Cedar Run. The craft was overturned, and when the 
pirates reached the hull they heard a noise within. 
With an axe they cut a hole through the bottom and 
rescued the captain's little daughter Edith. The child 
had been caught in a partition in the cabin and hung 



72 The Lure of Long Beach 



with her head barely above water. All the rest of the 
ship's company were lost. 

The Hotel De Crab, a Beach Haven landmark, for- 
merly one of the first U. S. Life-Saving Stations on the 
Island of Long Beach, was erected in the early days of 
that resort by Captain Tilt Fox and James Kelly, and 
the new house of entertainment was given the name 
"Hotel De Crab" by Colonel Gray and George C. Pierie, 
who happened to visit the island at the time, having 
sailed up the bay from Toad Hall, a small shanty near 
Bond's. 

The original Parry House at Beach Haven was lo- 
cated on Center Street, northward from the present site 
of the Hotel Engleside. Soon after the Parry House 
burned down Mr. Parry erected a small hotel known as 
the "Arlington Inn." At the expiration of a year he 
enlarged the Arlington Inn and changed the name to 
the " Baldwin Hotel," now known as the '* New 
Hotel Baldwin." Subsequently the Engleside Hotel 
was built, and this was followed by the Beach Haven 
House, the Ocean House, the Dolphin Inn and the 
Spray Beach House. 

On July 7, 1874, Captain '* Billie " Gaskill, of Tuck- 
erton, inaugurated and maintained for thirteen summers 
the first boat line between Tuckerton and Long Beach. 
During these years the boats ** Pohatcong," *' Avabell " 
and "Berkeley" were in commission, and an old-time 
Tuckerton resident named John Smith drove a stage- 
coach from the Tuckerton wharf to Camden, trans- 
porting Philadelphians to and from the shore. 



The Lure of Long Beach 73 

The stoutest heart would quail before the tales of 
terrible shipwreck along the Long Beach coast if these 
stories could be inserted here. Some 400 or 500 ships 
have gone down near this beach since the early days, 
and perhaps many more of which no record was ever 
made. 

Notable among the catastrophes was the wreck of 
the ** Powhatan," a clipper immigrant ship, which went 
down in a terrific snow storm off the Long Beach coast, 
about two miles above Little Egg Harbor (old) Inlet, on 
April 16, 1854, carrying 365 souls to a watery grave. 
A heavy sea was running when the vessel struck, and 
she broke up rapidly beneath the terrific pounding of 
the waves. Many bodies were later washed ashore, and 
much gold and silver coin was scattered the length of 
Long Beach Island. 

The *' Manhattan " was wrecked by the same storm on 
the same day the ** Powhatan" was driven ashore, and only 
one man was saved from this vessel. He had floated 
through the tumbling surf and was found in a little hut 
on the beach, where he had crawled for protection from 
the elements. 

During the war of the Rebellion an English vessel 
came ashore at Barnegat, and the only survivor of this 
wreck was a cat with short front legs, long hind legs 
and no tail. **Uncle" Caleb Parker, a quaint and unique 
character v/ho ''kept" the Barnegat Light, found the 
cat clinging to some wreckage and took it home. A few 
days later he found himself the possessor of a family of 
cats, all with short forelegs, long hind legs and no tails. 



74 The Lure of Long Beach 



These cats were considered nature freaks by the simple- 
minded shore folk until an EngHshman visiting the 
island explained that they were of a distinct ''breed of 
cats" from the Isle of Man, off the English coast. Al- 
though frequently crossed with the common and well- 
known variety, several good specimens of these Manx 
cats, with "gait hke a rabbit and a hopping lope," are 
still to be found on Long Beach. 

B ut the wreck of the good ship ** Francis" on the Long 
Beach coast is the occurrence from which all local his- 
torical events take their dates, at least in the conversa- 
tion of the old-timers. The ** Francis " had sailed around 
the Horn from California, and was laden with salmon 
and with the finest of wines, liquors and brandies. To 
this day the old salts and ancient mariners living on 
Long Beach wrinkle their faces in smiles and smack 
their lips involuntarily when the "Francis" is even 
named. 

When the ship started to break up under the pound- 
ing of the waves the cases of salmon floated ashore and 
were picked up by the frugal shore folk against a fish- 
less winter. Then the casks of port, madeira, sherry, 
champagne, burgundy, claret, moselle and tokay began 
coming ashore, together with many barrels of brandy 
and liquors. The news spread wildfire-like, and soon in 
Beach Haven, along the island, and from the mainland 
farms and villages, good, staid Quakers, Methodists, 
Presbyterians, and free lances alike were running back 
and forth along the beach waiting for a cask. Wheel- 
barrows, wagons, anything with running gear, were 



The Lure of Long Beach 75 

pressed into service, and some of the natives even rolled 
their barrels home. 

The cellars of Beach Haven resembled those of some 
ancient baronial castle or medieval abbey, and tem- 
perance advocates looked sheepishly downward when 
meeting inquisitive neighbors eye to eye. ** I guess 
pretty much everybody was a-feelin' pretty good," one 
Beach Haven pioneer put it, and smiled at the recol- 
lection. 

Men became cronies, and dated their friendship from 
the wreck of the ** Francis," and sentiments similar to 
those entertained by Tam O'Shanter were engendered : 

" Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither ; 
They had been fou for weeks thegither." 

And not only the men but the women folks partook, 
and became blithesome and gay. One eye witness 
states that a resident who had never known the taste of 
port smashed in the head of a cask, baled the fluid out 
into tin pails with a dipper, and offered a pailful to any- 
one who passed. Everybody who had no cask had at 
least a five-quart pail full of the wine, and it was swal- 
lowed like so much red lemonade on circus day. 

Two demure young ladies, strangers to "the cup 
that cheers," sipped a little sherry, and, liking the taste, 
sipped a little more. Then they sampled the port. 
The claret came next, and by the time their scandalized 
mammas had tucked them into bed the maidens had 
lost track of the different brands. 

And even today a glass of the good ship "Francis* " 



75 The Lure of Long Beach 



brandy might be had in Beach Haven if one but went 
about the matter carefully enough, and very, very tact- 
fully. 

And now, June 20, Anno Domini 1914, Long Beach 
Island, after many years of strenuous endeavor, at last 
is connected with the New Jersey mainland and with 
the United States of America by an automobile and 
wagon bridge. The bridge proper was built by private 
capital at a cost of $90,000. The Long Beach approach 
cost about $8000 and the Long Beach road about 
$63,000. The mainland approach and road cost about 
$18,000, and Beach Haven Borough alone spent 
$18,000 on Bay Avenue, within the corporate limits, 
bringing the lowest figure of cost of the improvement 
up to $197,000. 

Beach Haven occupies a unique position among 
South Jersey seashore resorts in that it lies, to use a 
favorite Long Beach expression, **six miles at sea." In 
other words, it is separated from the mainland villages 
of Tuckerton and West Creek by five miles or more 
of open water of the Little Egg Harbor Bay. 

The methods of reaching the island are, first, by 
rail. Frequent trains from Philadelphia, Camden and 
New York carry the visitor in comfort and with speed 
to the wave-washed, breeze-swept shores of Long Beach. 
And here it may be noted that Weather Bureau reports 
show the temperature at Beach Haven to range from 
five to ten degrees cooler throughout the summer 
months than at other New Jersey resorts not located on 
Long Beach. This low temperature is due largely to 



^1 




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Children's Paradise 



The Lure of Long Beach 77 

the fact that Long Beach Island never has a ** land 
breeze" in the seashore meaning of the word, because 
it is situated six miles out at sea and the **land breeze" 
is converted to coolness before it reaches the Island. 

The second method of reaching points on Long 
Beach is by boat. During the summer months two 
lines of boats ply between Atlantic City and Beach 
Haven, using the New Jersey Inland Waterway route. 
A boat line, too, is in contemplation between Beach 
Haven and Barnegat City, and another between Barne- 
gat City and Bay Head. These lines will enable the 
New York and New England visitor to leave the land 
at the northern end of Barnegat Bay and to follow the 
cool and safe inland water channels southward, touching 
at any of the Long Beach towns desired. 

And from now (June 20, A. D. 1914) on, the popu- 
larity of Long Beach and its resorts, including Barnegat 
City, High Point, Harvey Cedars, Surf City, Barnegat 
City Junction, Arlington Beach, Ship Bottom, Brant 
Beach, Beach Haven Crest, Peahala, Beach Haven Ter- 
race, Spray Beach, North Beach Haven and Beach 
Haven, will increase by leaps and bounds. And thus it 
is that in the year Anno Domini 1914 the long dormant 
but nature-favored section of the New Jersey seacoast 
known as Long Beach is at last coming into her own. 

Heretofore there have been but two ways of getting 
an automobile into Beach Haven — on a freight car or 
on a flatboat. But this is now changed and Beach 
Haven and every resort on Long Beach has been placed 
on the automobile roads of the country, and can be 



78 The Lure of Long Beach 



reached on one's own rubber-tired wheels from Phila- 
delphia, New York, Atlantic City, or from any point in 
the land. The new road and bridge tap the State's 
Ocean Boulevard at Manahawkin, and thus put Beach 
Haven on the road twenty-five miles nearer New York 
than is Atlantic City. 

The bridge proper has been completed for some 
time and was built by private capital. The new im- 
provement had its origin in a conversation on a train 
between Charles W. Beck and Judge Maja Leon Berry, 
when Judge Berry suggested the incorporation of a 
Turnpike Company. As a result of this conversation a 
meeting of Long Beach property owners was called, and 
this first meeting was attended by Charles W. Beck, 
Robert F. Engle, W. Mercer Baird, James Baird, Henry 
B. iMcLaughUn, Joseph Schonder, Herbert Willis, Rev. 
Thomas J. Whelan, H. Earle McConnell and Samuel S. 
Andrews. These gentlemen formed themselves into a 
committee known as the Organization Committee of 
the Long Beach Turnpike Company, and made an agree- 
ment with Judge Berry by which he was authorized to 
raise the funds necessary for building the bridge. Sub- 
sequently the Long Beach Turnpike Company was or- 
ganized with the following directors: Charles W. Beck, 
W. Mercer Baird, Robert F. Engle, Henry B. Mc- 
Laughlin, Ezra Parker, George E. Paul and Thomas S. 
Sprague. The officers were : Charles W. Beck, Presi- 
dent; Ezra Parker, Vice-President; Henry B. Mc- 
Laughlin, Secretary, and W. Mercer Baird, Treasurer. 

The contract was awarded and the bridge was built, 



The Lure of Long Beach 79 

but the bridge was useless without some means of 
getting to it at either end. At the mainland end the 
bridge began in a meadow and was separated from the 
uplands by a great swamp. At the beach end the bridge 
ended six miles from Beach Haven, with no road be- 
tween. Having the bridge built, the energetic men of 
Long Beach still had this unsolved road problem before 
them, but it, too, has been solved. 

The history of the bridge from the birth of the idea 
until the driving of the last spike would fill a volume, 
and the difficulties and obstacles overcome in procuring 
the building of the connecting roads would fill another, 
but, as in every emergency the man for the place arises, 
so it was in the case of the Manahawkin-Long Beach 
Bridge and roads. And to the Hon. Maja Leon Berry, 
ex -Judge of Ocean County, is due in large measure the 
credit for the successful completion of this magnificent 
improvement that now connects historic Long Beach 
with the terra firma of America. 

The bridge is a solid structure, twenty feet in width 
and approximately two miles in length. The first span 
from the mainland across the bay is one mile long. 

Great preparations have been made in contemplation 
of the vital changes to be made upon Long Beach Is- 
land because of the opening of the new bridge and roads. 
On the mainland the farmers are tilling more land to 
vegetables because they will be able to market their 
produce on the beaches. The dairymen are enlarging 
their herds for a like reason. Heretofore all comestibles 
were shipped to the beach resorts by train, but now a 



80 The Lure of Long Beach 

ready access will be had by the teams of the mainland 
farmer. 

And in order to keep step with the onward march of 
things the residents and investors in Long Beach have 
organized the Long Beach Board of Trade. It is this 
body of aggressive and progressive men that have made 
possible the country-wide celebration incident to the 
opening to the nation of the solid roads and substantial 
bridge — a mending of nature's oversight — that are to- 
day, June 20, A. D. 1914, thrown open to the world. 

And like the arid deserts watered of old by the 
River Euphrates until they ''blossomed as the rose," 
so will Long Beach Island, wind-swept and sand-waste 
since the beginning of things, take from now on its 
proper rank as the premier seashore pleasure ground of 
that long sweep of ocean-washed beach-front between 
the Maine and the Florida coasts. 

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